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Touch-and-Go Letters 



The Real Japan 



Being volume one of Touch-and-Go Letters 
from 'round the World 



BY 



HARMAN BLACK 

a 

Author of The Real Round the World, The Real Europe, 
The Real United States and Canada, The Real Hono- 
lulu, Japan and China, Real Trans-Siberian Rail- 
way and Russia, Real Northern Europe, Real 
Southern Europe. 



REAL-BOOK COMPANY 

Woolworth Building New York 






.e.» 



I inscribe this book to my good friend and 
typical American, John F. Galvin. 



NOV 27 1922 



Copyrighted, 1922 by Harman Black 
©C1A689924 



To whom and about Pages 

whom letters 

were written 

The Widow 14, 17, 21, 22, 24, 93 

The Diplomat 14, 17, 21, 22, 24, 93 

My Nephew Gene Jr 9 

My Cousin Evalyn 12 

Mr. Hayward, a Public Official 14, 48, 56, 63 

Sam (a bachelor) 16 

My Nephew Dave 19 

Mr. Barnes (a lawyer) 23 

My Mother 25, 37, 49, 54, 59, 73 

Lamar (a friend) 31 

Vera (a friend) 34 

Uncle Charlie 67 

My Brother Gene 69 

My Brother Charlie 83 

Aunt Kate 74 

Bob (my best friend) 7S 

John G. (a business man) 84 

Ida (a girl) 89 

My Grandmother 90 

Joe and Mabel 91 

Leon (a tourist executive) 95 

Hiram (a farmer) 100 

Fred B. (a statesman) 107 

Aunt Tallulah 88 

Walton (a hotel proprietor) 105 

The After Word Ill 



During my round-the-world trip I wrote letters to some 
relative or friend every day. On a recent vacation I 
put the best part of 41 of them into this book. After 
the success of my series of round-the-world and Euro- 
pean and American guides I determined to put the letters 
into this book. They were originally to be mailed to 
wounded soldiers who were unable to leave their beds and 
to others confined in-doors by affliction. They will still 
be used in that way without charge. 

This volume, the first of the series, relates only to Japan. 
The succeeding ones, being prepared now, will tell of the 
rest of the westward trip 'round the world. They will 
like this one follow the same trips outlined in my guide- 
books, but will describe with some detail what is only 
briefly mentioned in the guide-books. 

This volume is for people who want a sketchy descrip- 
tion of countries and who do not believe it is necessary 
to wade through volumes to learn how Japan looks, and 
what her people do, and how they feel and why. I have 
referred to just enough of the past to help us understand 
some of the mystery and charm of the land of the 
Chrysanthemum. 



HARMAN BLACK. 



New York. 



Those of us born in the blue of the mountains love the 
sea and those born in the salt smell of the waves long to 
see the peaks. All of us who have the spirit of investiga- 
tion love both. 

Sometimes I think everybody likes to travel because 
it gives the opportunity to expend our excess energy and 
to gratify our insatiate curiosity because it is such an 
easy way to get definite ideas about things; may be it is 
because we like to do things that others have not done. 
Probably on account of all this and because our spirits 
know no fetters we long to see it all. At any rate I know 
that of all the pleasures given to man travel is the one 
we never tire of and from which we get the most and 
most lasting benefits. 

In March I had finished the most difficult law-suit I had 
ever tried, and I found to my delight that there was a lull 
in my practice that would give me a real vacation. Without 
knowing just why, I had always wanted to go around the 
world — not because Magellan had but because I hadn't. 
After my clerks had recovered from the announcement 
that I was going, I began my preparations. My first con- 
sideration was time, the second where and how I should 
go, the third expense, and the fourth baggage, or I should 
say as complete lack of baggage as possible. I finally 
boiled this down to a big Gladstone bag and a small hand- 
bag. Afterwards I found that even this gave me at least 
a third more space than I needed. 

If I had already written the series of guide-books that 
I published after my return from my trip I could have 
saved weeks of study in planning my journey. The proper 
seasons to be in different countries first occupied my 



attention. I had read and dreamed of Japanese cherry 
blossoms, and I tied my whole itinerary around my desire 
to see these exquisite buds. But nobody could tell me 
exactly when the cherry blossoms came in Japan. If I 
had known enough I would have recalled that Japan is a 
long country running north and south and that they bloom 
at different times in the different latitudes. I found that 
the season begins about the middle of March and lasts until 
May, depending upon the forwardness of the Spring. The 
single blossoms come first and they are followed by the 
gorgeous double blossoms, the latter almost as big as your 
hand. 

Only through the personal influence of a friend was 
I able to get a stateroom on the Pacific Mail steamship 
"Siberia", which left San Francisco on the 29th day of 
March. So one morning, after I had closed up a few 
things I hadn't done in New York, and after writing 
home a final letter from the United States, I left the St. 
Francis Hotel in San Francisco in a taxi for the Pacific 
Mail pier. My round-the-world ticket had been bought 
in New York for $441.21, and it covered the whole trip 
except the gap from Moscow (the Western end of the 
Trans-Siberian Railway) to Paris, which I afterwards 
bought for $109.64. Post-war prices are higher of course. 

I had made my will before I left New York, writing 
out everything that would need to be known to go right 
along with things in case I never came back. I felt then 
that it was a stupendous undertaking to go "round-the- 
world". Now I know how easy it is. 

I shall never forget just how I felt before the ship 
started. Honolulu, the first stop, seemed very far away, 
and Yokohama looked just on top of the curve my mind 



made of the water, China was on the slope going down 
the other side, and Siberia was lands-end indeed. There 
were not many people on board, and the prospect of sixteen 
days at sea was not alluring. But at that time my friend, 
The Diplomat hadn't called my attention to a fair girl 
with topaz eyes and bronze brown hair who appeared 
at dinner that evening. 

Friends sent me a lot of books, and I looked forward 
with keenest delight to having time to read them. I had 
Murray's Guide Book to Japan, and some of Lafcadio 
Hearn's, and Professor Chamberlain's "Things Japanese". 
I had often found guide books unsatisfactory, even in- 
cluding the cyclopaedic Baedekers, but I had no idea this 
feeling would ever drive me to write a round-the-world 
series of books ; consequently, I took not a note upon the 
entire trip. But I did write these letters home. If they 
serve to remind men of what they have seen on similar 
trips, or interest those who have not had the time or means 
to go 'round, I shall be more than repaid the work of 
writing them. 

H. B. 



On the Pacific Mail S. S. "Siberia", 

Pacific Ocean, March 29th. 
My dear Gene, Jr. : 

When we were leaving the almost completely landlocked 
harbor of San Francisco, the water was very muddy and 
everybody was asking what had become of the beauty of 
the Golden Gate, but presently the Siberia stood out to 
sea through a narrow channel between the rocky shores, 
and the sun came out and lighted up the blue mountains 
that reach down to the water, and then the picture was all 
that had been told of it. Floating clouds wreathed all the 
azure bills, and the view was like the fjords of Norway. 
In the first two days it was cloudy and cold and we all 
began to ask what had become of the "Sunset track" that 
the advertising folders told us of, but on the third day 
the sun painted with gold the waters of the Pacific, and 
for three days we have ploughed through trackless blue, 
flecked with white-caps that complete the most exquisite 
tints of sea and sky. The sun, as we approach the equator, 
sets so fast you can see it go down like a golden balloon, 
almost in a moment. There is no after-glow and no vivid 
cloud coloring, just a slight mellow light, then some dark 
Japanese looking clouds that float by in long curling 
wreaths. The smoke from the steamer adds a murky out- 
line, and the stars soon come out clear as points of 
diamonds. I saw one last night, a big red one, that "fell" 
for seconds, and seemed to be finally swallowed up in the 
sea. There are lots of flying fish that skim along the 
crests of the waves, then dive out of sight. Yesterday, 
we saw four whales spouting like a campaign orator. The 
ship is only six hundred feet long, but is quite comfortable 



and the fare splendid. There is a Phillipino band on 
board, and they play LaPaloma, and all the soft Spanish 
songs, as well as "Row, Row" and all the ragtime tunes. 
Our waiters are Chinamen who wear immaculate blue 
linen "slips" in the morning and snowy linen ones at dinner. 
They are noiseless and competent, but never waste any 
words. They insist on calling rice "lice" — but otherwise 
are all right. I asked one if they did any washing on 
board. He said "ship no washee." The dining room 
is about 100 feet square, and is the writing room as well, 
after the meals are over. The band sits in a gallery round 
the room, and there are little alcoves round the balcony. 
In the morning we are called at eight by the Chinese 
steward, and take a hot salt bath, having previously washed 
in soap and fresh water in the state-room. Then we dress 
and breakfast at nine. Everybody is gathered by this 
time round the wireless office to read the morning bulletins 
from San Francisco. Then a walking match around the 
deck where the strenuous ones play shuffleboard, or hit 
a striking bag. Yesterday as we reached the warm climate, 
they rigged up a canvas bag 25 feet x 10 feet for sea 
water bathing on the forward deck. It holds about forty 
thousand gallons. The feeding of the coolies on the aft 
deck is quite a show. They eat rice pulled out like mac- 
aroni, and chopped dried cabbage and small pieces of 
raw chopped meat and fish. 

Our Captain, contrary to all the rules of the sea, is 
quite a humorist. Today he met a seasick man and asked 
him, "Have you been 'aboard' all day ?" The man replied 
"Yes, leave out the 'a.' " The Captain sits at the head of 
the table and there are a Russian Countess and her brother, 
a doctor, a captain in the army, and a major to whom I had 

10 



a letter of introduction. The latter is going with his wife 
to command the Marine Corps at Pekin, and they have 
asked me to come to see them. A great many tourists are 
going only to Honolulu, while some others go on by way of 
China and India through the Suez. I have about decided 
to go from Nagasaki, Japan to Shanghai, thence up by a 
new railroad to Pekin, &c, and by the Trans-Siberian rail- 
way to Moscow. Look in your geography and see what 
"trade winds" are, and what the "magnetic equator" is, 
and how it differs from the equatorial line. 

Almost every mile of the Pacific is charted by our 
Government and the other governments in co-operation, 
and after having taken averages for maybe fifty years, 
they know about what winds will blow, and their velocity 
in every section we travel. 

The time has gone by very quickly, and after a day in 
Honolulu, we will have nine days more before we land 
at Yokohama. Our anticipations are as keen as those of 
Christopher Columbus when he came over in his caravels, 
except that we have read of what we are going to, and 
he knew nothing of what he was getting into. There is a 
man at the table with his nephew, younger than you are, 
and the Uncle's name is Will, so every time he speaks I 
wish you were with me. Never mind, next time I will 
go by India and take you with me. Kiss Grandma for 
me and Julia, and give my love to all the rest. 

Your affectionate Uncle, 

H. 



11 



Pacific Ocean, March 29, 10 P. M. 
My dear Evalyn, 

It seems very hard to realize that my dream of going 
to the Orient is about to come true. I have been thinking 
all day about the general belief that the East is the land 
of flowers and romance. I am sure that there are prettier 
flowers in the gardens of Europe than I shall ever see in 
Japan and China, and surely the history of Europe is 
replete with everything romantic, so I have concluded 
that the lure of the East is not in its romanticism but 
its mystery, its differ entness, and its unaccountability from 
our Western standpoint. It seems very queer to go West 
in order to reach the East ; but even in San Francisco, you 
get a little of the atmosphere of the Orient in its China- 
town and the universal employment of Chinese laborers 
and servants here. 

The good Pacific Mail ship Siberia is big enough to 
be comfortable, and the fare is almost as good as the 
Mauretania. There ar,e about 140 on board, and a very 
agreeable list. Army officers, and engineers, the inevitable 
English and Scotch tourist, and the lady from Rochester 
New York, who loves to pronounce her morning ablution 
"baaath". I was put at the Captain's table, as I had a 
letter tc him. The table is full of pink roses, and in the 
centre is a quaint little Japanese pine tree that looks like 
part of the decoration of a doll's house and grounds. A 
Chinese steward stands behind every plate, noiseless and 
competent, but wholly impervious to the English language. 
They waste no words, such as "Sir" or "very well", but 
follow the scriptural injunction as to "yea, yea", and 
"nay, nay". They dress in pa jama-looking suits, very thin 

12 



for this season of the Spring, and when you look around 
you always imagine a woman is standing there. Tonight at 
dinner, they have changed from the blue "ratine" effects 
to pure white, and they look and move around like a lot 
of Oriental ghosts. It seems impossible for them to use 
an "r". If they tried to say rats it would come out 
"late". 

Today at promptly 12 :30, the call "all ashore" was given, 
and promptly at 1 :00 we steamed out of foggy San Fran- 
cisco Bay, and in an hour we were outside the Golden 
Gate and coasting the blue mountains of California, going 
apparently due north for quite a while. Finally the fog 
lifted, and we found ourselves in the waters of the Pacific. 
In the Bay the water is yellowish and muddy. 

The fog-horn blew for two hours today, but the sea 
cleared late for a beautiful Pacific sunset, like the sunsets 
in Norway. 

As these letters are my diary, please preserve this one, 
which is No. 2 of the trip, and send it to my mother, 
compiler of this and all my other trips, and some day I 
will put it into a book. 

I thank you so much for your letter and the tracts. I 
am reading a few chapters every day in the Bible, which, 
of course, I find most interesting. I wish I had your 
religion. 

Lots of love to Grandma and Aunt Kate and Charlie, 

Your affectionate cousin, 

H. B. 



13 



Pacific Ocean 
En Route to Honolulu, 

March 30th. 
Dear Mr. Hayward: 

I find it was not necessary to wait for the Cherry Blos- 
som season in Japan. There is a peach blossom on board 
who is the "image" of Fritzie SchefT and is one of the 
j oiliest and brightest girls I ever met, so I am enjoying 
the trip very much. The weather the past two days has 
been grand, and everybody is having a fine time. We are 
due at Honolulu tomorrow, and I will mail this there. 
The view on the boat is fine and there is a very interesting 
crowd on board. Mr. Wickersham, former Attorney Gen- 
eral, gets on board tomorrow for Japan. 

Today, they rigged up a canvass tank of sea water on 
the deck for bathing. It was clear and green, while the 
sea it came from, under the same sky, was a beautiful 
blue. Can you determine from this whether the sea colors 
the water or the water colors the sea? The sky, of course, 
was blue like the sea. 

Cordially yours, 

H. B. 



Beyond San Francisco 
On the Pacific, April 3rd. 
My dear Frank: 

I must tell you of a very agreeable young fellow who 
is going out to China to enter our diplomatic service. He 
is just the age to enjoy this journey and his enthusiasm 

14 



is delightful. As we left the Fairmont Hotel in San 
Francisco the day before we sailed, he pointed to a very 
charming young woman with bronze hair and topaz eyes. 
"If she was going along" he said, "sixteen days on the 
Pacific Ocean would be like sixteen hours". To my sur- 
prise, the day our ship lifted anchor I saw her waiving 
good-bye to friends who had come down to see her off. 
This morning he came down to breakfast and told me of 
a beautiful widow on board, but he said I would have to 
find out for myself who she was. Of course it was the 
same girl. * * * They hit it off at once, but the strangest 
thing is that for some unaccountable reason she has de- 
cided that my youthful friend, whom we call The Diplomat, 
has some great secret or mystery in his life and is undoubt- 
edly going to the Orient to forget his troubles. The only 
reason I can ascribe for this notion of hers is that like 
all well-trained would-be-diplomats he maintains a dis- 
creet reserve. When I told him that Edgar Saltus said 
there was "nothing so impenetrable as silence" he agreed 
with me that he must humor her in her ridiculous surmises 
about himself. I promised to aid all I could in heightening 
the mystery. He has apparently had no difficulty in getting 
her tremendously interested, and now I am wondering if 
she really does think him a mysterious personage or is 
merely playing the game with him. Our gallant American 
Commandant has already warned him, solemnly quoting 
Sam Weller's admonition about "bewaring of widows" — 
but I think he has warned the wrong person. I am still 
having a wonderful trip. 

Cordially yours, 

H. B. 
15 



Pacific Ocean, on the way to Honolulu, 
which is 2100 miles west of San Francisco, 

April 3rd. 
Dear Sam: 

These Pacific Mail boats are constant surprises. The 
fare especially is unusual. We have wonderful curries, 
at which the Chinese cooks are adepts, and pineapples and 
tropical fruit of all kinds, and a very excellent Phillippino 
band. All day we walk and talk and eat, and some of us 
drink. The Chinese crew and a great many of the pas- 
sengers gamble on the deck all day. The dealer has on 
a small table a pile of plain white rice buttons. He ar- 
bitrarily, or rather accidentally or haphazardly, separates 
a pile of them, say half or a third from the others, and 
then with a small stick rakes four of them away at a 
time. There are four corners for bets. At each of these 
you can bet that when he finished raking off four at a 
time, there would be left one, two, three or four. The odds 
were very fair, and sometimes I would play all morning. 
One day I saw a degraded specimen of Mongolian win 
two hundred dollars in gold at a single play. I first won 
seventy-five dollars, then hung on until I had contributed 
sixty-five to the Confucian fund, recalling Bret Harte's 
lines that "for ways that are dark and for tricks that 
are vain, the Heathen Chinee is peculiar." 

We had some missionaries on board, and their lugubrious 
countenances kept the other passengers away from them. 
What a wonderful idea it would be to send our magnetic 
men and attractive women to convert the Heathen! I 
haven't made up my mind yet about foreign missions, but 
I have about unattractive missionaries. 

16 



My cabin mate was an engineer going to the Phillip- 
pines; a rough big-hearted philosopher who immediately 
attracted one of the young women aboard. After they had 
sat out unusually late one night and he had come in quietly, 
looking rather puzzled, I said: "She seems to like you". 
He merely replied: "Nothing nobody says to nobody at 
sea don't mean nothing nohow". 

At San Francisco, as I hadn't time to do so in New 
York, I had my passport vised by the Russian Consul so 
that I wouldn't have delay when I started through Siberia. 
Then I bought light woolen over-shoes to slide through 
the Japanese temples. I bought baggage insurance, took 
out accident and health insurance, had myself vaccinated 
for typhoid and small pox (which is dangerous in 
China), bought a compass and an alarm watch, got 
up a cable code and registered my cable address, and 
mailed home a mailing itinerary. So you see I haven't 
had much time to enjoy myself. 

Your friend, 

H. B. 



Honolulu, U. S. A, April 4. 

My dear Frank: 

I am afraid The Diplomat is getting along a bit too fast, 
so I am preparing to stage a quarrel between them to give 
him a chance to catch his breath. He and The Widow 
start the day at the piano with some sentimental song 

17 



which she sings in rather an alluring voice, then they read 
aloud and walk the decks and look over the rail at the 
blue waters. They are always together at meal time. He 
says she has "more curiosity than forty cats" about him, 
and as far as she can without being rude has asked him 
every adroit question known to feminine minds. I have 
advised him to answer casually and truthfully, but to 
volunteer no information whatsoever as to who or what 
he is or where he came from or where he is going. He 
says she asked him last night as they sat out on deck 
rather late how it happened that with his brilliant prospects 
(which she knows nothing of) he had never thought of 
marrying. I had warned him to be especially reticent along 
this line, and he seems to be following directions explicitly. 
He answered by assuming a far away look and simply 
saying, "How do you know I haven't?" This added fuel 
to the curiosity flame. She told him that she and her 
friend who is travelling with their party had decided that 
he must have known sorrow, and that if she thought for 
sure he had had any trouble she could sympathize with 
him, but that he didfl't seem to trust her or want to tell 
her anything and so she could only guess that he was 
going to China. For a youngster the boy showed some 
signs of being a real diplomat, because he simply said 
"There are some things you don't want to talk about on 
a pleasure trip". I will write more about this when it 
happens, which it certainly will. 

I am, 

sincerely 

H. B. 
18 



Honolulu, United States of America, 

April 4th. 

My dear Dave: 

Arriving at Honolulu I expected to see the divers at 
Waikiki first thing, riding the surf. Instead we anchored 
at a modern wharf, and automobiles were waiting in droves 
for passengers. I was not prepared for so much modern- 
ness, and the surprise is greater still that upon landing 
you see very little in the business part of town suggesting 
anything more than any American City, — clean streets, 
and shops with American window dressing. But you do 
see some yellow "mammies" in stiff white mother Hub- 
bards. 

The main hotel, the Alexandria, is as modern as money 
can make it, with elevators and electricity and a roof 
garden. But you have only eight hours until the boat 
starts, and you drive through pineapple farms that load 
the air with fragrance to the Aquarium. You have passed 
queer old houses that remind you of the ante-bellum type 
in the South and grounds thick with flowers and palms 
and the giant flowering bouganvilla, a great red flower on 
trees sometimes thirty feet high. The aquarium is not 
as extensive as New York's or Naples', but there are fish 
of every color of the spectrum, wonderful oranges and 
blacks and velvet green and golden and pea-cock blue, so 
exquisite and remarkable that you think of rare Chinese 
silks and wonderful flowers. The colors are delicate as 
orchids, and worth going half round the world to see. 

But the main trip of this short one day stop is to the 
"Pali". Along splendid roads built by the United States, 
you go up and up through the heavily verdured mountains 

19 



until your motor stops at a wind-swept point where the 
velocity of the breeze nearly drives you over the sheerest 
precipice. Eighteen hundred feet below this rocky height 
spreads the whole fresh green island of Oahu and at 
every beach sparkles the green water as it breaks into 
white foam on the white sand. It is as beautiful as opal 
dust illuminated by strong lights. Every green inch of 
the island is covered with lichens and moss and shrubs. 
It is as clean as a dipped boquet, and is like some great 
exquisite green jade set in the foam of the sea. From 
the Pali we motored back along the smooth roads (built 
by our government) lined with palms and the sweet smell- 
ing pineapple plantations. 

When I paid ten dollars to cable home my safe arrival, 
I began to realize how far away I was. 

After a pleasant luncheon at the Service Club (army and 
navy) where I met the Admiral in command of these 
waters, I returned to the ship. After buying one of the 
wreaths of bright native flowers, I settled myself down 
for another ten days aft sea. My fifteenth day from New 
York had brought me to the island of Oahu and Honolulu, 
and, aside from a low shelving coruscating beach where 
the waves break into jewelled mists, I thought when I left 
the ship for this wonderful drive that Honolulu was like 
any other American town. It is the great cross roads of 
the Pacific, and our coaling station for the fleet. 

"Some coal yard" as one of the passengers irreverently 
said. 

They are great divers these Honolulans. If I tossed 
a coin from the deck of the ship to the water below, 
which swarmed with them as we sailed out of the harbor, 
they would catch it in the clear green water with their 

20 



hands or their teeth before it had time to sink two feet. 
They looked like animated bronzes in the bright western 
sunlight. 

This morning a Chinese took my washing, and this 
afternoon at four o'clock delivered it on the ship. 

As I broke my glasses on the ship, I walked into an 
occulists' shop and in less than two hours he had ground 
my compounded lenses and repaired the frames. From 
this town being only headquarters for whalers in the 
early days to this efficiency now is "going some". 

I almost forgot to tell you of the War Cloak of the 
Hawaiian chieftain, Kamehemeha, which it took genera- 
tions of natives years to make and which contains 150,000 
gorgeous feathers of every hue. Then I saw a Congrega- 
tional Church made of coral rock. 

At last I did see the surf riders at Waikiki Beach, which 
glistens like a jewel in the twilight tropical sunlight. They 
are lithe little men who float their flat boards over the 
wave tops with wonderful balance and precision all day. 

Very sincerely, 

H. B. 



Pacific Ocean, 

April 8th. 

Dear Frank: 

If there was anything else on board to do I wouldn't 
be amusing myself stirring up these troubles, but after 
The Widow thought up such a nice improbable story about 

21 



The Diplomat I didn't have the heart to let him disillusion 
her. It would be such a jar to her intuition. But the boy 
is going too fast. Today they sat on the deck and she 
was manicuring his nails, just to show her devotion I sup- 
pose, and he submitted in full view of the promenaders. 
I am afraid my influence over him is weakening, and I 
am almost afraid to advise him any more. He may tell 
her. The worst of it is that he has for so many days 
lived the part of a man with a sad, sad past that he 
almost believes it. And I distinctly remember how excited 
and pleased he was two days out to get a wireless from 
some girl in Frisco. It looks as if I would have to suggest 
to him that he appoint a committee of passengers to deter- 
mine whom he really likes. Now that I have started in 
with this deception business I suppose I will have to stick, 
but I am becoming almost disgusted with him. He started 
out to be a Houdini as far as matrimonial handcuffs were 
concerned, but it seems to me he is acquiring the lovers 
lock-step. 

On ship-board how jve enjoy the troubles of others ! 

Very truly, 

H. B. 



Pacific Ocean, 
April 8th. 

Dear Frank: 

The pretty young widow has it all figured out, The 
Diplomat says. She tells him that she is sure that what- 
ever happened it is not his fault, and right or wrong she 

22 



is eternally with him. The Captain of the ship, who isn't 
always studying the charts, likes the widow himself, and 
I have decided that he is the only available excuse for 
their first quarrel. Acting according to my instruction, 
The Diplomat has told her that he didn't see why the 
Captain should neglect the ship all the time because the 
passengers have eyes of certain colors. Then The Widow, 
who had also concluded that it was high time things 
should not run so smoothly if there was any true love 
in it, replied that "For a man who seemed to be just 
recovering from a sorrow and who had no right to demand 
anything from anybody else in the world, The Diplomat 
seemed to be taking a good deal of a burden on himself in 
looking after the Captain's affairs." The boy looked hurt, 
apologized and walked away, and they have been apart all 
day. Tonight as he stepped into his stateroom he kicked 
against a glass of water on the floor. It had a small blue 
flower in it and I suppose indicated that she was sorry. 
It indicated to me that she wanted him to think she was. 
Next time I will have to get them really angry, because 
that little blue flower certainly did the trick. 
I am, with regards as ever, 

Sincerely 

H. B. 



Between Honolulu and Yokohama, 

April 9th, 

Dear Mr. Barnes: 

At Honolulu, former Attorney General Wickersham 
and his wife and two young women who are their guests, 

23 



came aboard. I have had the pleasure of talking a good 
deal to Mr. Wickersham and find him one of the few- 
public men who doesn't shrink on closer inspection. He is 
wonderfully energetic and earnest and is one of the most 
interesting men I have ever met. Today, we had a long 
talk in a walk round the decks about racial characteristics, 
and climatic influences; and the amount of information 
he had at his finger's tips was quite amazing. I asked 
him how he managed to get so much time for reading 
outside of law books. I don't recall his exact answer, 
but it was on the Arnold Bennett line of utilizing all the 
twenty-four hours of the day. It is pleasant to meet one 
of these men who measures up to our ideals of a real 
Attorney General; and what most impressed me was his 
exceedingly high sense of his duty as a citizen and a 
publicist. He seems to have a perambulating library on 
the Far East, and eats up a book or so of it every day. 

I hope the office is running smoothly. Don't work too 
hard. 

With best wishes, 

Yours truly, 

H. B. 



Pacific Ocean, 
April 12th, 
Dear Frank: 

Judging from present indications, I think The Diplomat 
will be an engaged man before we land at Yokohama. 
If he escapes until they see a cherry blossom grove 

24 



together, he is doomed any way. He has already cap- 
tivated the father, mother, and the other widow who is 
travelling with them. The Widow told him she had confid- 
ed to him that she was not a real widow, had been married 
to an older man who did not understand her, didn't like 
his relatives, and all that old stuff we hear so often in 
divorce trials. I really feel responsible in a way for this 
situation because I encouraged him to deceive, but I had 
no idea it was going to be so serious. It never occurred 
to me to put over any story about secret sorrow for myself, 
and I didn't know it would go half as well for him as it 
has. He has jumped in like a man falling off the back end 
of a ferry. I don't know what will happen when they 
get to the parting of the ways because they are going to 
separate at Shanghai, he to go north across Siberia, and 
she south by India and the Suez to Europe. 

Sincerely, 

H. B. 



The Grand Hotel Lid., 
Yokohama, Japan, April 14. 

My dear mother: 

Here I am in the antipodes sixteen days from New 
York and 12,000 miles from home. It is a dream-land 
of flowers and trees and strange temples and strange 
people. So absolutely different that you feel you are in 
a different world. But every morning I read here at least 
two newspapers well edited in English. 

I thought I had travelled in foreign countries, but this 
is the only really foreign one I have ever seen. This is 

25 



a military little nation, and the first reminder we had was 
when they told us no photographs could be taken within 
the 6 and a half mile limit outside the fortifications, the 
grey stone walls of which reaching down to the water's 
edge were the first thing we saw steaming up the bay. 
The ship anchored a little way out and a natty and very 
courteous Japanese health officer lined us up on the deck 
and, as one of the ladies said, "looked at our tongues". 
The inspection was delightfully quick and cursory. 

The courteous representative of the Standard Oil Com- 
pany met me with their tender in a driving rain, and the 
clouds hung so low we could hardly see the shore. I was 
delighted to hand him the fifty American cigars which the 
Japanese customs allowed me to bring in free. 

Yokohama is one vast temptation for foreigners who 
bargain-hunt for ivories, silks, embroideries, cotton crepes, 
bronzes, cloisonnes and porcelains. 

H. B. 



Yokohama, 
April 14th, 

My dear Evalyn: 

When we landed, Mrs. said "I won't get off, 

this in Jersey City." But we did, and there were long 
lines of two- wheeled baby carriages tilted over on their 
short shafts, the end of the latter crossed with wood 
and turned with some white metal. It requires an acrobat 
to get in one with the top up. As far back as 1905 
there were over thirty thousand jinrikshaws and jinriksha 

26 



men in Tokio alone. It has been called a "Pull-man 
car". They cost very little, and when you feed the owner 
you are feeding the horse. The harness of the latter 
and the livery of the former are amazingly cheap. After 
one had pulled me all day, next morning he appeared 
with an entire change of costume even including hair-cut, 
and his companions jokingly announced that he was think- 
ing of retiring on his fortune. I had paid him sixty 
cents for the day, and this was much more than the tariff. 

Probably in a minute after touching the shore, and 
trying to get used to being in Japan, which the guide calls 
Japon, I saw the latest thing in Japanese overshoes. They 
are undershoes, and consist of a small piece of wood tied 
on with the usual thong between the two toes, and under 
it two vertical supports about three inches apart to keep 
the foot above the wet and mud. When I heard five hun- 
dred of these in the railroad station, they made a noise 
like a lot of stage horses approaching over an imaginary 
hill. The next thing I saw was or were babies, straddled 
across their mothers' backs and wadded thereto with some 
kind of a bandage and quilt. I saw today about 5,281,498 
of these back ornaments with doll heads and chinquepin 
eyes (most of whom are literal * "soreheads"). 

They never seem to be noticing anything, and a 
woman said today that her "yellow lady's burden" was 
three and a half years old. To this habit of carrying child- 
ren on the shoulders of their mothers so long is ascribed 



* A great number of children in Japan have sybaritic eczema 
of the scalp, which though very disfiguring is not at all serious. It 
could be easily and quickly cured with an antiseptic wash, but a 
local superstition credits it with warding off other diseases later 
in life, so it is permitted to run its course. 

27 



in part the short legs of the Japs. Japan is fast becoming 
too "foreign" (American) ; the first intelligible sign read 
"E. M. F. automobile", the next "Singer machine". The 
little jinrickshaw men trot along lifting up their backs 
from under their round-topped hats just as a horse jogs 
his harness up and down. Every hat has a name, usually 
"Tomachi" on it, with the number of his "garage" and 
its name painted in white upon the blue back-ground. 
Their legs are about twice too big for them, and they 
lean forward and push their little carriages most ener- 
getically. The jinrickshas are not rubber tired, but are 
very comfortable with steel spokes and hubs. They cost 
about thirty-five dollars gold. The charge for a one-man 
rickshaw (without another man to push up hills) is 25 
sen for two and a half miles, and 15 to 20 sen per hour. 
A sen is half a cent. The practical disuse of the horse 
for passengers keeps employed thousands of men who 
don't have to feed their steed in addition to themselves. 
This helps out in a little country where you pay a trans- 
portation tax every time you travel, and a producer's tax 
of twenty-five per cent, when you make anything, besides 
stamp tax for receipts, &c, &c. 

The Japanese settlement is continuously numbered re- 
gardless of streets, which makes no end of confusion in 
finding places. Along the quay to a side street from the 
landing, then you turn into the Bund, or foreign quarter, 
along the water front a mile to the Grand Hotel, which, 
except for being full of Japanese servants, is thoroughly 
American, and run by an old friend from New York. 

I get a good room and fine fare for $3.50 per day Amer- 
ican plan. Cats and frogs continued to pour all day, but 
the young lady whose family I have attached myself to 

28 



decided that we nevertheless go to see the Dai Butsu at 
Kamakura, 14 miles away and an hour by train. For 
twenty minutes we 'rickshawed to the station in single file, 
(the rickshaws hold one person each with the guide), 
then took one of the toy-like narrow gauge trains. The 
seats run lengthwise the car like our street cars. Second 
class was upholstered in what looked like "cretonne", but 
our first class was in that delightful Pullman car effect 
of plush. The seats are very low, to suit a short-legged 
race. Nearly everybody went second class, so we had 
nobody in first class except an officer in the Japanese 
army. We went through miles of the most picturesque 
rice lands under water, and saw trees and bushes and 
houses unlike anything else in the world, and very, very 
interesting. Finally we were at the little wooden station 
at Kamakura, and got into three 'rickshaws in the driving 
rain. We went through smooth alleys of road with bamboo 
fences on both sides, and busy bees of little Japs working 
on wood and carrying huge loads balanced on long poles. 
Some funny signs. One was "Milk and Bibles" ; another 
"The Waldorf Hotel by Charley" (the proprietor). The 
feet of our jinrickshaw men pattered along the muddy 
places for nearly an hour, when we were dumped by 
letting the shafts fall down. Got out and walked to the 
bronze statute of Buddha called the Dai Butsu" (Big 
Buddha) forty-seven feet high, hollow with a stairway 
to the top inside, and windows looking out on cherry 
trees and weeping ferns, red camelias and flowers of all 
kinds. We crossed a slippery stone-arched bridge, and the 
green placid face of the Dai Butsu loomed ahead at the 
end of a very artistically worked out avenue. The hands 
are crossed in the lap, and the ends of the thumbs just 

29 



meet. The eyes are solid gold, and the mouth twelve 
feet across. The statute made of sheets of cast bronze 
in 1252, is 49 feet high and 97 feet in circumference. 
The length from knee to knee (the knees are spread 
apart) is 35 feet. The silver "boss" or knob in the 
middle of the forehead weighs 30 pounds. Considering 
that he has sat in the same position seven hundred years, 
the expression is pleasing and not tired. It seems to say 
"This beats standing, and I represent a quiescent religion." 

Another most interesting statute is the Goddess of Mercy 
in the temple of Kwannon. It is of gilded brown lacquer 
and is over 30 feet high. 

Kamakura now has only eight thousand people, but 
it had over a million people in it between the twelfth and 
fifteenth century, and in 1192, it was established as the 
capital of the Shoguns by Yoritomo. The Khan's am- 
bassador, who was sent by his master to demand the sur- 
render of Japan, was beheaded at Kamakura. 

Coming back to the railway station, we stopped at the 
beautiful Kaihin-In fyotel, where we had tea served by a 
tidy little Japanese maid on a cool verandah overlooking 
the sea. 

I won't attempt yet to describe the cherry blossoms. 

We came back and 'rickshawed through the busy streets 
of Yokohama, especially Theatre Street, where the Japan- 
ese have moving pictures of the rarest type, generally 
a murder, &c, &c. This morning I left the photograph 
to have a group of you and father made in the gold 
lacquer. These photographs appear to be black on a 
background of gold. They say there is only one man in 
Japan who can make them, and he jealously guards his 
secret. They are framed in lacquer into which have been 

30 



ambered real cherry blossoms, so that the effect is very 
delicate and artistic. I ordered one for you, and said 
I would take two more if satisfactory. This is about all 
I have bought except some silk shirts from Yamatoya, the 
famous maker here, and a peanut carved out of ivory 
that is so natural you can almost smell the pink nut inside. 
At Yamatoya's I saw 350 girls making the silk shirts, in 
a little bamboo and paper factory. I have arranged to 
leave Harbin on the 29th of May so as to be in Paris 
about the 10th of June. I had a hard time trying to get 
accommodations on the Trans-Siberian, but succeeded. 
The State Express on this line leaves but once a week, and 
the number of berths is limited. I am going to Shanghai 
on the North German Lloyd Line, leaving Kobe May 9th, 
arriving there May 13th. Will be the guest of the Amer- 
ican Commandant at Pekin, Major Dion Williams. 
Lots of love to all of you until next time. 

As ever, 

H. B. 



In Japan, 
April 15th. 
Dear Lamar: 

The latter part of the fifth century marked the beginning 
of Japanese art, which, of course, came from China. One 
of its earliest examples is in the temple of Horuji. Kan- 
okas is the first artist of note of whom we have any 
record in Japan. The first native Japanese school of 
painters, Yamato-Ryu, was started in the eleventh century. 

31 



At the end of the thirteenth century, the leader of the 
Yamato-Ryu assumed the name of Tosa, and the Tosa-Ryu 
school exists to this day. The two motives that moulded 
the Japanese school were, of course, the Chinese and 
the Indian Buddhist, which showed strong traces of the 
classic. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the 
Buddhist Priest So jo started the caricature. Then began 
the recrudescence of Chinese influence in Japanese art. 

Sesshu born in 1421, after a novitiate in Pekin, founded 
still another school in Japan. Kano Montonobu, who 
was born in 1477, became the founder of the greatest 
school in Japan, and it lasted three hundred years. 
Maruyama Okyo started the last period in Japanese art 
in the latter period of the eighteenth century. The pop- 
ular school (Ukiyo-e-Ryu) was composed of the workers 
who originated the wonderful Japanese illustrations, and 
this same class began to draw for the engravers. 

To love art is to love lacquer. It is gum from the lacquer 
tree and is afterwards treated to give it different colors 
and characteristics, with charcoal, turpentine or iron fil- 
ings. Exposure to a bright light turns it black before 
it is made up. It dries quicker in a damp than a dry 
spot. The lacquer surface is built up by covering an 
object with glue and hemp, then lacquer, than hempen 
cloth, then drying, and laying on additional coats of the 
gum. Between the different coats it is polished with a 
rough flat stone. The final touch is a powder of deer's 
horn. The design to be made is put on thin paper sized 
with a gum. On the side away from the lacquer the 
outline of the figure to be carved is drawn with a rat's 
hair brush. When this paper design has been rubbed 
into the lacquer it leaves the outline. This is rubbed with 

32 



a soft substance in which is used a stone a little harder 
than pumice, which white stone brings out a pattern of the 
same color. This pattern is then filled in with lacquer, 
which is powdered with gold, silver or colored dust. This 
is in turn varnished twice and again rubbed with a char- 
coal whet-stone with powdered deer's horn and oil. The 
makers of lacquer suffer from poison, and the lacquer 
rubbers protect their hands with gloves. The most exquisite 
carving is done in red lacquer, and the Japs work in it 
nearly as skilfully as the Chinese who invented it. 

The early seventeenth century marked the beginning of 
real ceramics in Japan. The "Old Satsuma" belongs to 
the next 150 years, and the best of that odd ware was 
made in the early nineteenth century. 

With Buddhism came carving, especially in wood and 
ivory. The wood is in addition usually lacquered. Japan's 
greatest sculptor was Jingoro in the sixteenth century. 
His best pieces are two elephants, and the "sleeping cat" at 
Nikko. Speaking of cats, most of them in Japan here 
have no tails. — The lower classes buy charms with the 
picture of the god invoked and generally a short prayer. 
These are religiously gathered from the sacred places 
visited by pilgrims. They are frequently made from 
the timber of destroyed temples, some of which art cut 
down at the end of twenty-five years. The oldest picture 
in Japan is in the Horyuji Temple at Nara. It is of the 
seventh century period, by a priest from Korea who 
selected a Buddhist subject. One painter is said to have 
depicted horses so natural that a rope had to be added 
to the sketch to keep them from going off daily to a 
neighboring pasture. 

Some of the finest pictures here are in the form of 

33 



kakemonos or scrolls, which is the Chinese as well as the 
Japanese way of making picture frame and all together. 
Your friend, 

H. B. 



Yokohama, Japan, 

April 15. 
Dear Miss Vera: 

You are the only one of my friends interested in Oriental 
history, and you will doubtless laugh at some of the 
things people have told me and at others I have read. 

Buddhist priests in 57 A. D. brought Chinese customs 
into Japan by way of Corea. Then the great families 
with their chiefs became the real rulers of Japan, although 
they made at least nominal obeisance to the Mikado. It 
seems that Corea was conquered in 200 A. D. by the 
Empress Jingo. The mists of antiquity veil early Japanese 
history up to the fifth century of the Christian era. After 
that, the Japanese rulers were Mikados descended from 
the Sun-Goddess. Their sway did not extend to the 
north, however, where the aboriginal Aainos still lived. 
The first Mikado, Jimmu Tenno, ascended the throne 660 
B. C. The Chinese calendar was put into force in 602 A. 
D. Kojiki, the first Japanese book, was published in 
712 A. D., and printing was introduced in 770 A. D. 
Kyoto was made the capital (in all there have been over 
sixty capitals) in 794 A. D. In 809 A. D. the Hirogana 
syllabary was invented. 

In 1192 A. D. Yorimoto, head of the Minoto family, 
under the title of "Shogun", started Japanese feudalism — 
the Mikado and the Shoguns making a combined govern- 

34 



ment in which the Mikado had the nominal and the 
Shoguns the real power. From 1332 to 1392 there were 
two rival lines of Mikados, those ruling the southern and 
those ruling the northern courts. In 1542, the Portuguese 
discovered Japan and in 1549 St. Francis Xavier appeared 
upon the scene. In 1624 Christianity was proscribed. In 
1853 our own American Commodore Perry arrived and 
insisted that the splendid isolation of Japan should cease. 
This marked the complete restoration of the Mikado's 
power, and ended the dual rule of Shoguns and Mikados. 

In 1857 the first treaties were made with European 
powers, but it was not until 1860 that the Japs sent their 
first Embassy abroad. 

Now Japan is, of course, thoroughly foreignized. Before 
1868 the Catholic missionaries were sent out of all Japan, 
and except Nagasaki, Japan was closed to foreign trade. 
Even in Nagasaki, only the Dutch were allowed to trade, 
and there only within a very restricted sphere. In 1868 
the Shogunate was abolished, and in 1871, after a war 
between the followers of the Shogun and the Imperialists, 
the feudal system was abolished. In 1872 the railroad 
was built from Yokohama to Tokio ; in 1873 the Gregorian 
calendar was adopted, and between 1880 and 1906 the 
new codes were promulgated and the new constitution 
adopted. Since Kublai Khan and his Mongol fleet were 
defeated, Japan was never attacked by a foreigner until 
the Russo-Japanese war. Japan's first Diet met in 1890, 
and in 1895 Japan was victorious over the Chinese. The 
Anglo- Japanese Alliance followed, and in 1902 and in 
1905 Japan was successful in the war with Russia and 
established the Korean protectorate. 

The native religion of the Japanese is Shinto, a Chinese 

35 



word which means "the way of the gods". Upon this 
Indian Buddhism was grafted, coming by way of China 
and Corea. Each of these religions has so encroached 
upon the other that neither can be said to exist now in 
Japan in its purity. In the province of Satsuma alone is 
now found original Shinto. An annual visit to the festival 
is all that Shinto demands of its devotees. It leaves to 
Buddhism the morals and the future of its devotees. At 
birth every Japanese is assigned to the care of one of the 
gods of the Shinto faith, and at his death the occult 
Buddhist officiates. The Shinto belief is a strange mixture i 
of a mythology like the Greeks, and reverence for an- 
cestors. The principal deity is the sun-goddess, who was 
born from the left eye of the builder of Japan. From 
her are descended all the Mikados. All religious Japanese 
make pious pilgrimages to her shrine at Ise. The Shinto 
priests can marry, and Professor Chamberlain says the 
Shinto cult teaches : "Follow your natural impulses and 
obey the decrees of the Mikado". The architecture of 
the Shinto temples is. simple and in front there are always 
the two dogs which can drive off devils, and are known 
as the Corean dog and the Heavenly dog. 

Japanese Buddhism is divided into six sects which 
are in turn divided into at least thirty-five sub-sects, which 
furnish as many creeds as the different Christian denom- 
inations, and unlimited time is spent in highly metaphysical 
disquisitions which probably get the converts nowhere, 
because as Sir Ernest Satow says : "Except to those who 
attained to Buddhaship their highest truths are incompre- 
hensible. The only consolation for the ordinary penitent 
is that ignorant and obtuse minds are brought * * * by 
* * * truth under a form suited to their capacity". 

36 



Today I ran across the curious claim by the Japs that 
one Fu Daishi, one of the earliest Chinese priests who 
came to Japan, is the inventor of the revolving book case, 
and he decreed that if a man didn't have time to read 
the six thousand odd volumes of the sutras, he could, 
by turning this revolving bookcase three times, receive 
a reward. 

By the census of 1905, there were in Japan forty-nine 
millions of people. 

I find that the rate for letters parcel post and telegrams 
and money orders is ridiculously low. A telegram of 15 
words costs only 20 sen each additional character five 
sen more. Parcels can be left at the railroad stations 
for two sen per day. Likewise the railroad fares are low, 
2y 2 sen per mile, but there is a minimum government tax 
of two sen for journeys under fifty miles, and for two 
hundred miles fifty sen. The American plan rate at 
foreign hotels in Japan is from four to ten yen per day, 
that is to say two to five dollars a day. The native hotels 
charge from one to three yen per day. 

The season was too late and we missed the Ume- 
Yashiki where bloom the five hundred very old plum 
trees that creep along the ground like grapevines. 

With sincere regards, 

Cordially yours, 

H. B. 



Tokyo, Japan, 

April, 17. 
My dear Mother: 

Our pleasant party is quartered at the Seiyoken hotel, 
which is just as modern as the Ritz. There were not 

37 



rooms enough, so the big parlor was divided by the largest 
and highest screen I ever saw; and the ladies occupied 
one side and the men the other. 

From Yokohama it is only eighteen miles to Tokio by 
the railway, the first built in Japan. British engineers did 
the job in 1872. 

Today I called at the office of the Japanese Welcome 
Society, where they gave us tickets to the private gardens 
of Mr. Kajima and to the jiu-jitsu school, and presented 
us with souvenirs that looked like Japanese coins. 

I got your laconic wire today saying you are "not com- 
ing" to Paris. I am so sorry I will not see you until I 
come home, but I know you would not have cared for 
seventeen days on the Pacific. 

Yesterday morning I went in Yokohama up the big 
hill that takes two 'ricksha men (one pusher and one 
puller) to the "tea house of a hundred steps." It doesn't 
amount to much, except to see a fine view of Yokohama's 
multitudinous roofs of gray tile. (The only place they 
don't color them.) *The ride up was exquisite, like the 
Italian lake villas, only a great deal more artistic. There 
is a wonderful view here of Mississippi Bay. I saw a 
big tree piled around with heavy poles, showing how they 
make them bend so gracefully over the sides of their hills. 
I went to a nursery of dwarf trees beautifully arranged, 
but even my valise is too small for trees. I passed a girls' 
and boys' school, and when they saw me and her (the 
daughter of the old gentleman and his wife, who is a 
widow) all the little girls over seven went into hysterics 
and screeched and laughed and clapped their hands and 
ran around and yelled until the teacher had to ring the 
bell and call school. They thought we were great curios- 

38 



ities. When the bell rang, a woman teacher went in the 
gravelled play ground under bamboo trellises, and on a 
small organ played "Shall we gather at the river", to 
which the whole crowd minuetted or turkey-trotted around 
for an hour. Finally she changed it to "Clementina". 
We stayed an hour before going to the tea house through 
the most exquisite public garden. 

There were half a million people in Yokahoma in 1913. 

In the afternoon saw the funeral of a great friend of 
the poor. We intruded into this private affair at the 
wooden temple, and found ourselves in midst of the 
400 of Tokio. A man at the temple gate asked card. I 
said "no got card". He pushed us inside. We lost our two 
human taximeters in shape of jinriksha men in the crowd 
of over 100,000. First came shaved-headed priests, then 
fifteen more priests in cloth of gold and silver and 
lacquer cloth, then professional mourners, then 110 arti- 
ficial lilies, lotus flowers and flowers of gold, all about 
ten feet high and borne by men. Also cherry blossoms 
and plums same height in wooden holders with "laundry" 
inscriptions, banner or standard bearers without number, 
flags with strange inscriptions, &c, &c. 

The word "Japan" is a corruption of "Jihpen" which 
means "where the sun comes from". Marco Polo, the 
great Venetian traveller referred to it as Zipangu. 

Going to catch train. Good-bye until next time. 

As ever, 

Affectionately, 

H. 



39 



Tokio, Japan, 
April 18. 

My dear Mother: 

In the funeral I was describing in my last letter the 
coffin was borne like a huge palanquin and evidently the 
body was laid at full length. The palanquin was gor- 
geously carved in natural wood, and hysterical crowds 
followed so close that the pall-bearers had all they could 
do to carry the heavy burden on their sturdy shoulders. 
The ordinary Buddhist coffin is square and the body is 
folded head to knees like the position of an infant as it is 
carried before birth. The funeral of Empress Dowager in 
1897 lasted for weeks, the procession was miles long and 
cost about three hundred thousand dollars. The lacquered 
two wheeled ox-cart which carried the body in the coffin 
was pulled by three oxen, tandem style, the first black, the 
next light brown and the third black and white. The 
grave diggers represented big black birds. 

Toyko, the eastern capital, formerly Yeddo, became the 
capital of the Shoguhs in 1203. But Kyoto was also the 
western capital and home of the Mikado. Though only 
fourteen miles from Yokohama, it takes nearly an hour to 
get there by train. 

Every morning here I read local papers very well 
edited in English. 

Yesterday morning I went to trie Imperial Palace 
grounds, and they make all the other palace grounds I ever 
saw look cheap. The spaciousness and uncrowdedness, 
the peaceful moat and the massive walls that slant down 
to the water, and the great field beyond, without a struc- 
ture of any kind, and the wonderfully trained pine and 
willow trees, give an air of repose that befits the home 

40 



of such an exalted personage as the great Mikado of 
Japan. The roads are at least 200 feet wide, and go 
entirely round the moat which surrounds the palace yards. 
Visitors see nothing of the buildings except some curved 
white roofs on a background of black shingles. 

From here we went through miles and miles of the 
queerest flat gravelled streets, very muddy lately, with doll 
houses on both sides, Japanese squatting at work on the 
clean mattings, fashioning the wonderful little bamboo 
baskets and cleancut wooden articles. Babies fill every 
nook and corner, always tied on the backs of their little 
sisters. They rock them by teetering up and down or 
swinging side-wise, and these things they do all day long. 

When we start out, it looks like an ostrich farm on 
parade. First the one with a Japanese umbrella over 
her dark brown hair and big hat, then her friend, both 
from Los Angeles, under another paper umbrella, then 
her mother and then her father, the latter 71 years old. 
Then comes "I", and lastly the guide. The latter I pay 
$2.00 a day and his expenses, and he does all my worrying 
for me. He speaks nearly as much English as I do 
Japanese, but he is slower about it than I am. He has an 
unbroken record so far of not giving any information on 
any question, but he is very faithful and honest and we 
might get a worse one, so we hang on to him. She says 
he is a "total loss", but I read the guide book, and I am 
independent of him. He can tell when you expect to laugh, 
and "beats you to it" with a small Japanese gargle that 
sounds as if it came from the throat of a gargoyle. He 
got up at daybreak to meet me at the ship, and I think 
will be a galloping consumptive in another week of this 
cool weather. Yesterday we took a motor to Koganei, the 

41 



avenue of cherry blossoms. It is too late for the single, 
but the double pinks are something glorious. The road 
running through them at Koganei is raised about 4 feet 
and the trees planted on both sides, so that there is just 
room for a high carriage or auto to pass. Yesterday 
there was the final fete of cherry blossoms, and the road 
was full of thousands of tipsy and "full drunk" men, 
who would try to stop the auto, push it, stand in front 
of it, peer in and leer at the ladies, and strike at the car 
with sticks, and refuse to get out of the way of it. Once 
I lost my temper and struck at one of them, but I found 
by laughing at everybody they would at once change 
their demeanor and roar back a welcome. Some threw 
cherry blossoms in the car. Our chauffeur was wonderful 
(he was our second, as the first car broke down) and 
wormed his way among the thousands until he got back 
to the city, where we ran into a bicyclist, entirely through 
the latter's fault. A great crowd gathered, and he was 
taken to the hospital practically unhurt. When our car 
had difficulty in turning back in the narrow road, a Jap 
policeman said in English that he was very sorry and 
would lodge a "complaint" with the Inspector of Police. 
I told him no, we were "very happy", and thanked him, 
&c. There were thousands of little booths like fete days 
everywhere, but I never saw one-tenth as many drunken 
men. I felt a great deal relieved when I got the ladies 
home. I won't attempt to tell you about the blossoms. 
They are the most beautiful pink tint, with double blos- 
soms almost as big as a small hand, and the trees are 
the most remarkable shapes, and the freshest, coolest green 
imaginable. It has been raining a good deal, and they 
were as washed as a bouquet just from a vase of water. 

42 



I am having a good time, as I am running the trip. 
Last night we went to a Jap play at the Imperial 
Theatre. I am mailing you a program, which please keep. 
The play was a joke of course, but the orchestra wasn't. 
No Japanese music should ever be heard by the naked 
ear. The voices are worse than the samisens, which are 
like old banjos I used to make out of a cove-oyster can, 
and the voices are worse than anything else except the 
samisens. The tragedy you see outlined in the program 
was punctuated by a shrill knock from a mallet in the 
wings every time a murder or other interesting event was 
to occur. The mallet made the only "hit" in the troupe. 
Nearly every character was killed at least four times. 
Finally, when the stage had been depopulated, there was a 
so-called dance. It was beautiful in the costume coloring, 
but was mostly a series of posings by the dancers, without 
expression or particular grace. The stage settings were 
very beautiful, especially the interiors of the houses repre- 
sented. We fiinally escaped about 11 :30 and came homle 
in the entirely closed 'rickshaws, very cold. This morning 
it was quite cold, so I travelled in heavy clothes and big 
overcoat. After an hour's ride we got to the public park 
and saw more wonderful "weeping cherry trees" and de- 
formed maples, and maiden hair ferns 75 feet high and 
twenty feet in circumference. The pines are all trained 
down, or trained to completely twist. We went through 
the art galleries and museums which contain many interest- 
ing things, especially the car which bore the late Emperor's 
coffin, a great two-wheeled thing magnificently lacquered 
and decorated, which was drawn by the white bullocks. 
In this same museum are the curious trampling boards 
of metal containing representations of Christ before Pilate, 

43 



Descent from the Cross, &c. Those suspected of being 
Christians (a crime in those days) were compelled to 
stamp on these to show their contempt for Christianity. 

Then I saw roosters from Tosa with tails 14^ feet long. 
These birds when alive were taken out by a man for a 
walk and he held their tails off the ground to keep them 
clean and unworn. Their tails were carefully washed 
every once in a while. 

Then there were white peacocks, and the sacred cranes, 
and an elephant as big as a house, chained by one leg. He 
seemed twice as big as any one I ever saw. The zoo is a 
tangled dream of flowers and trees and vines. We came 
back through "Curio" street where all the antiques are 
sold to foreigners. At the start we were so cold, we 
stopped at a little open air tea house. They served us a 
concoction made of beans and sugar wrapped in big leaf 
cornucopias, and another of chestnut sweetened in a pink 
pastry flavored with cherry blossoms, and the same color. 

THE IMPERIAL PALACE. 

The new palace, inhabited by the Emperor and Empress 
since 1889, is not accessible to the public, only those who 
are honored with an Imperial Audience being admitted 
within its walls. Nevertheless the following description, 
abridged from the Japan Mail, may be of interest : 

Entering through long corridors isolated by massive 
iron doors, we find ourselves in the smaller of two recep- 
tion rooms, and at the commencement of what seems 
an endless vista of crystal chambers. This effect is due 
to the fact that the Shozi, or sliding doors, are of plate 
glass. The workmanship and decoration of these chambers 
are truly exquisite. It need scarcely be said that the 

44 



woods employed are of the choicest description, and that 
the carpenters and joiners have done their part with such 
skill as only Japanese artisans seem to possess. 

Each ceiling is a work of art, being divided by lacquer 
ribs of a deep brown color into numerous panels, each 
of which contains a beautifully executed decorative de- 
sign, painted, embroidered or embossed. The walls are 
covered in most cases with rich but chaste brocades, except 
in the corridors, where a thick embossed paper of charm- 
ing tint and pattern shows what skill has been developed 
in this class of manufacture at the Imperial Printing Bu- 
reau. 

Amid this luxury of well assorted but warm tints, re- 
main the massive square posts — beautiful enough in them- 
selves, but scarcely harmonizing with their environment, 
and introducing an incongruous element into the building. 
The true type of what may be called Imperial esthetic 
decoration was essentially marked by refined simplicity — 
white wooden joinery, with pale neutral tints and mellow 
gilding. The splendor of richly painted ceilings, lacquered 
lattice-work, and brocaded walls was reserved for Buddhist 
temples mausolea. Thus we have the Shinto, or true 
Imperial style, presenting itself in the severally colorless 
pillars, while the resources of Buddhist architecture have 
been drawn upon for the rest of the decoration. In one 
part of the building the severest canons have been strictly 
followed ; the Six Imperial Studies, three below stairs, and 
three above, are precisely such chaste and pure apartments 
as a scholar would choose for the abode of learning. By 
way of an example in the other direction, we may take 
the Banqueting Hall, — a room of magnificent size, (540 
sq. yds.), and noble proportions, its immense expanse of 

45 



ceiling glowing with gold and colors, and its broad walls 
hung with the costliest silks. The Throne Chamber is 
scarcely less striking, though of smaller dimensions and 
more subdued decoration. Every detail of the work shows 
infinite painstaking, and is redolent of artistic instinct. A 
magnificent piece of tapestry hangs in one of the reception 
rooms. It is 40 feet by 13 feet, woven in one piece 
by Kawashima of Kyoto. The weaving is of the kind 
known as Tsuzuri-ori, so-called because each part of the 
design is separated from the body of the stuff by a 
border of pin points, so that the whole pattern seems 
suspended in the material. The subject represented is an 
Imperial procession in feudal Japan, and the designer 
has succeeded in grouping an immense number of figures 
with admirable taste and skill. The colors are rich and 
harmonious, and the whole forms one of the finest pieces 
of tapestry in existence. 

The furniture of the palace was imported from Ger- 
many. Externally the principal buildings are in pure 
Japanese style. 

The Buddhist temple of Sengakuji is the burial place of 
the Forty Seven Ronins. The story is an interesting one 
of the retainers of Asano, who at one time by order of 
the Shogun at Yeddo entertained the Mikado and his 
suite. He asked a nobleman, Kira, how it should be done 
to meet the formality of the occasion, and he told him, 
but Asano didn't pay him for the information and he 
ridiculed him in every way possible, finally asking him to 
tie his shoe for him. Asano, although he may have been 
a "cheap man", had a certain amount of pride and he 
slashed Kira across the face. For this Asano was con- 
demned to hari-kari, and his family declared extinguished 

46 



and his retainers disbanded. In revenge the forty-seven 
retainers afterwards captured Kira and offered him the 
polite alternative of death or suicide, and as he failed to 
avail himself of the latter, they killed him. They took 
his head and reverently placed it on Asano's grave. Then 
they were all condemned to hari-kari, which they cheer- 
fully committed in the various homes they had taken up 
in order to fulfill their vengeance. 

This afternoon we visited Uyeno park and some famous 
temples that I will not attempt to describe, and the tomb 
of the "Second Shogun". It is a marvelous work of 
lacquer and stone and gold. By these tombs is the local 
Coney Island, and there were jugglers, and barkers, and 
tents and moving picture shows innumerable. We 'rick- 
shawed again through the Imperial grounds and came 
back by the pearl store and there we saw how the oysters 
are planted with a small piece of nacre as a nucleus, and 
after four years produce the most exquisite pearls of what- 
ever colors the Japanese desire. They call them "culture" 
pearls. 

I cannot realize that I am in a real world with these 
cute little people of minature, and I am constantly won- 
dering what they think of us. Leave here Sunday for 
Nikko for two days, then South. Sail for Shanghai from 
Kobe, arriving Shanghai the morning of the 13th after 
going through the Inland sea. I miss you and Gene, Jr., 
who will come with me next time I hope. This is a fine 
modern hotel, except the servants stick to Jap language. 
Lots of love for you always. I feel stingy seeing so many 
interesting things without you. 

Devotedly, 

H. 

47 



Tokyo, Japan, 

April 19. 

Dear Mr. Hayward: 

In 793, the Mikado Kwammu bestowed the name 
of Kyoto on his new capital, which, in Chinese, 
means "metropolis". It was first laid out like 
Pekin. But in 1177 the palace was burned, and this 
changed the general plan of the place. The present 
palace sits within plaster walls that surround twenty-six 
acres of ground. We entered through the "Gate of the 
August Kitchen", and here signed our names and waited 
in an ante-room, where there were some very remarkable 
sepia drawings upon the walls and screens. From there 
we approached the "Pure and Cool Hall", under the 
steps of which runs a small rivulet. Here there is a Chin- 
ese chair inlaid with mother of pearl, where the Mikados 
used to sit. The Seiryo-den in later times has been used 
for receptions and festivals. One part of this place, which 
is sixty-three by forty-three feet, was filled with fresh 
earth every day, so that the Mikado might truthfully say 
that he had paid homage to his ancestors on the ground 
every day. His throne is of chamoecyparis wood. 

Then we went through the Shishen-den, which, being 
intrepreted, means the "purple hall of mystey veiled from 
the vulgar gaze". On each side of the modern throne 
are stools upon which reposed the Imperial Sword and the 
Imperial Jewel. Fifteen steps below is the court — the 
government offices having been formerly divided into fif- 
teen grades. The men of lowest rank were down on the 
earth, the other persons who ascended into the hall. Then 
we went through the minor palace, whose windows dom- 

48 



inated a pretty garden. Then to the Imperial study with 
coffered ceilings. One of the three rooms composing the 
Audience Chamber was for those of higher rank, one for 
lesser rank, and the last for the Mikado. There are 
really marvelous picture of wild geese and cherry and 
plum blossoms here. 

Kinkakuji is the "Golden Pavilion", whose owner built 
a palace for retirement and assumed the dress of a Budd- 
hist priest, and shaved his head. From the verandas of 
this building, visitors amuse themselves feeding the Ger- 
man carp, about the only thing left German in Japan now. 
The third story, restored in 1906, is crowned with a 
bronze phoenix three or four feet high. Near this temple 
is the "mountain of the silk hat" because Mikado Uda 
in a hot July long ago directed the high hill to be covered 
with white silk so that it would at least look cool. 

H. B. 



Tokio, Japan, 
April 20. 
My dearest mother, 

This morning I started to the Courts. On the way 
our cavalcade suddenly stopped in front of the steamship 
office, which our guide had solemnly told us was "no 
such here". Upstairs a Scotchman named Smith and a 
Swede who represented the company offered to telephone 
for us. He called up central by saying "mushy-mushy". 
This was too much, we all had to laugh. In less than 
twenty minutes he had secured central. The object of the 

49 



call was a Mr. Yezae, to whom; one of the ladies had a 
letter of introduction. Nearly everybody she has letters 
to is dead. This man's brother had typhoid fever, but 
was himself alive. From there I went to the Welcome 
Society of Japan and got letters to see private houses, 
gardens, &c, &c. I saw the courts, in a great dingy 
wandering structure of brick. The lawyers appear in 
black gowns embroidered around the shoulders in silver, 
and they wear black silk caps with a long tail hanging 
from them. In the criminal courts, I saw four women, 
hand-cuffed, and wearing straw basket-shaped hats clear 
down over their heads to hide their shame at being brought 
to court. A Japanese reporter took charge of me and 
showed me through the Court House. It was quite un- 
interesting. They have no juries, but usually three to five 
judges sitting. From there I went to the House of 
Representatives, and the House of Peers, about three 
hundred members in each. They were most cheap and 
unattractive. I went through with about fifty Japanese 
school boys who were there with their teacher. 

Yesterday I saw the school where they teach jiu-jitsu. 
It was a big one story wooden building with high trussed 
roof, the floor covered with squares about a yard each way 
of matting, on springs, so when the wrestlers fall they 
don't hit as hard as it sounds. They are very skilful, and 
after three years are allowed to wear a black sash, starting 
in with a white one and going through several intermediate 
colors. The rules of the wrestlers provide twelve throws, 
twelve lifts, twelve twists, and twelve throws over the 
back. Like Turkish wrestlers they are fat and heavy but 
enormously strong. The highest form of it is jiujutsu in 
which skill out-does brute strength. Its teachers know 

50 



certain places in the human anatomy that are extra sen- 
sitive and where merely a touch will completely conquer 
an opponent. It is interesting to know that the succession 
to the Japanese throne was once won by one of two sons 
of the Mikado who out-wrestled his brother. 

The Charge d' Affaires of the American Legation had 
already called on me at the hotel and left me permits to 
see a lot of other private grounds, &c, &c. 

The weather was warm today for the first time, it having 
been quite cool. We met an interesting Swedish gentleman 
at the steamship office, and he showed us all around all 
the morning. He asked us to guess the name and nation- 
ality of his companion in the office. We guessed every- 
thing from Russian to Australian, but it was just "Smith" 
from Scotland. The bank was closed today and I had no 
money to go to Nikko tomorrow (Sunday), but the hotel 
loaned me one hundred yen on my due bill, so I go there 
tomorrow at 9:25. Here we will spend probably two 
days at least, as it is said to be the finest place in Japan 
for real beauty. 

Last night we motored through the busy part of the 
city, and the sight was very exquisite. Every one of the 
small globes over the lights is frosted and it gives a very 
soft mellow effect. Every house they are on is a toy house, 
with little verandas in front too small for anything except 
flowers and the dwarfed trees you see everywhere. Paper 
is not used so much now for glass as they say it used to 
be, but you will frequently see whole house fronts of it, 
always white. The population here is much cleaner and 
better dressed than at Yokohama, where the lower classes 
are lower than little negroes at home, and look more stupid. 

I was told today that the brother of an emperor who 

51 



flourished before Christ died, and the members of his 
Court were buried alive in a standing position around him. 
Instead of dying they wept continually which saddened the 
Emperor so that he decreed that when he died images of 
men and animals should be buried near him instead. 

Houses here are built on top of the ground without any 
walls except the sliding paper shoji, and the rooms are 
divided by paper screens. The floors are highly polished 
and covered with mats, which are so uniform in size that 
they are used as units of computation in measuring the 
size of rooms. The houses are "heated" by a miserably 
small charcoal brazier which is a travesty on warmth. 

I don't think in years I would get used to the unreality 
of this country. I will have something to think and write 
and talk about for many years to come. 

As ever, your devoted son, 

H. B. 



Nikko, Japan, April 20, 
2000 feet above sea level. 

My dear Mother: 

It is 90 miles north of Tokio and takes 4^2 hours to 
get here. 

On the way at Utsonomiya I changed cars for 
Nikko, which is the name for that whole mountainous 
section where the temples are. From Imaichi the 
Nikko-Kaido road runs twenty miles through the 
shade of glorious cryptomerias (pines) hundreds of 
years old. They are about seventy feet high. 

52 



From the station at Nikko it is a long pull of a 
mile or so for the rickshaw men up through the prin- 
cipal street of the village, past the famous red lacquer 
bridge. This is the one General Grant was invited 
to go over, but as none except royal feet have ever 
pressed its sacred boards, he tactfully and graciously 
declined. It isn't such a big bridge, but in a graceful 
curve it spans the raging torrent of a river, and the 
workmanship and coloring are superb. The lacquer 
must have been of remarkable quality because here it 
is successfully exposed to every disintegrating element. 

Nikko is one of the few spots in the world where a 
letter of credit is not cashable, so I borrowed a hun- 
dred yen from the proprietor of the Seiyoken in 
Tokio. I had never met him until the day before, but 
"he was a wonderful judge of human nature" one of 
the irreverent young women in the party said. One 
of the men added that he was also a great gambler. 

I left Tokio at 9:25. Hotel lost my overcoat but 
found it and sent it on next train. Poured rain on 
arrival, but probably clear tomorrow. Very wild and 
beautiful spot. Came through interesting rice fields. 
Men, women and horses working in them up to knees 
in mud and water. 

This very Japanese Hotel on top of a high hill. 
Stoves in halls and open fires in rooms. One jinrick- 
shaw man and two pushers to bring us up hill. We 
were the only first-class passengers on trains except 
one. This Japanese pulled out a travelling rug, re- 
moved his shoes, and coiling himself up like a tailor 
at work, soon lost himself in an American novel. To- 
day lost except the getting here, account of rain. I 

53 



will write tomorrow. Still wishing you were with me. 
Lots of love for my dear mother. 

As ever, 

H. B. 



Nikko, Japan, April 21st. 
My dear Mother: 

They say "Do not say magnificent until you see 
Nikko," the temple and scenic district of Japan, four 
hours by train from Tokio. Started early this morn- 
ing, and after short 'rickshaw ride through giant 
cryptomeria grove (pines one hundred and twenty-five 
feet high) whose branches meet over your head, went 
by a smooth wide approach to the temple yards. A 
great red lacquer torii stands at entrance, and the 
red black-roofed temples inside the grounds are so 
much more beautiful than I can describe that I will 
not essay it. These* Buddhist shrines are great grace- 
ful lacquered wooden buildings, so exquisite they are 
like some heavenly dream of gold, blue, and yellow. 
There is a great deal of brass in and on them and the 
whole effect is half that of metal, for the great pil- 
lars and timbers are many of them the color of 
bronze, brass and gold, but when you sound them by 
striking you discover that they are all of wood. Out- 
side they are a glory of color combination, and in- 
side the softest effects of gold and a deep red. The 
great effect is, of course, in the setting of these won- 
derful trees, surrounded by stone walls four feet 
thick, grown deep with green moss, and over the 

54 



whole the effect of the cool solemn earth and the 
wonderful workmanship in the interiors. There is a 
simplicity about the main lines of the buildings that 
is most remarkable ; but, nevertheless, every nook and 
cranny is rilled with some exquisitely colored carving 
of a bird or a dragon or a fish. I am sending you 
some pictures, but they show little of the skill used 
in the details of these wonderful houses. 

Up two hundred and thirty-seven great massive 
stone steps, and at the top is the bronze tomb of the 
first Shogun, and even Napoleon's tomb fails to im- 
press you as this one does. The guide called it a 
"tumor." The wooden walls surrounding the temples 
are of red lacquer as fine as any Japanese tray, and 
polished until they shine like mirrors, Japs being con- 
stantly busy cleaning them. In front of every altar 
are little pieces of Japanese white paper in which the 
devout have put contributions rolled up like small 
bags. At all the temples, we had the nuisance of 
having to pull off shoes and put on soft felt slippers 
(not just slipping on overshoes as at Constantinople). 
Like all guides, ours is an utter failure, being one- 
tenth of one degree above no guide at all ; but I read 
the guide-books and know what I am seeing. 

This afternoon we went in 'rickshaws to the "Back 
View Cascade," the "Seven Cascades," the "Mist-fall- 
ing Cascade" and the "Pitch-Dark Cascade," all pretty 
waterfalls, which are nothing to compare with Tal- 
lulah in Georgia, and some of our lesser American 
falls. The mountains are very pretty, having the 
same gray look you see in all the Japanese prints 
the world over. 

55 



After we got back the crowd was tired out, but 
I went again to the temples. I was the only man 
there, and I was immensely impressed, especially at 
the tolling of the great mellow-toned bronze bell. 
It was as soft as music, and the echoes reverberated 
and billowed through the great pine trees for almost 
a minute. I could not help feeling how presumptuous 
we are to try to wean these people from a religion 
that has produced such beautiful sights and sounds. 

Nothing has happened to mar the great joy, and 
instruction as well, of my trip so far. 

I have secured my room on the Siberian train leav- 
ing Mukden for Russia on May 29th, which will put 
me in Paris about ten or twelve days later. Three 
weeks I find will give me plenty of time in Japan, 
and ditto China. 

Tomorrow by 'rickshaw and Sedan Chair to Chuzenzi 
Lake, the Toxaway of Japan. With a heart full of 

love for all of you. 

■ 

Your affectionate son, 

H. B. 



Lake Chuzenji, Nikko District, Japan, 
Seven and a half miles from Nikko, 

April 22nd. 
My dear Mr. Hayward : 

I am up here some nine thousand feet above the 
sea, after an interesting trip, first on a 'rickshaw for 
four miles, then in a chair suspended between two 
long bamboo poles borne by four men. 

56 



This was my first expression with a "kago," and 
I at once awarded it first price for discomfort. These 
chairs suspended between the poles carried by the 
four men have an unhappy way of preceding me down 
the mountain, and following me up, which kept me 
doing balancing tricks the whole way. When I wanted 
rest I got out and walked. 

The chair I was using I think came out of the ark, 
and is painted green, and has a comfortable pad in 
it of a bright red. There is a foot-rest tied on by such 
flimsy strings that the first time I used it the strings 
broke, which delayed the procession a few minutes. 
The sensation of riding in one is very much like at- 
tending your own funeral. It is equally as slow, and 
along the mountain roads the outcome is fully as 
doubtful. The mountains are full of great bay trees, 
not in leaf yet, and some big pines, and a net-work 
of bamboo which with its roots make a mat on the 
rocks fully three feet thick. The four men walk in 
unison, and I counted one hundred and twenty-three 
steps before they shifted the bamboo from right to 
left shoulder. They carry a bamboo stick sawed off 
square, and when they change the burden they prop 
the contrivance, so as not to have to put you down. 
As we began to ascend a hill, it was only fifty-three 
steps before they changed again, and they varied 
the length of time of their shifting as the climb was 
steep or easy. On the way we stopped at three tea- 
house rests, where tea was served in little handleless 
cups (a light green tea) for all of us, for a total cost 
of ten cents. The mountains are hard to describe. 
The highest are an almost vivid blue, with streaks 

57 



of snow where the sun cannot reach them, and the 
lower ones are just like those in America and else- 
where, except that the stone seems to be nearly all 
gray, a sort of shale that breaks off into flat pieces 
or into blocks of very uniform shape. There are a 
great many pretty cascades, and while the effect is 
not so grand, I believe it is more picturesque even 
than Norway. This is the comparatively dry season 
and the streams are fairly low. The climb up takes 
nearly four hours, altogether. I walked fully half way up 
the mountain, where there is generally a very good 
zig-zag road with very unusual retaining walls made 
(at great expense) of square rock cubes. The lake 
is not, to my mind, as pretty as Lake Yellow- 
stone, but is a very sweet and peaceful little body 
of blue water. The government has planted a great 
many trees on the mountain sides where they will 
produce artistic effects and at the same time replenish 
the forests. These add greatly to the scenic beauty, 
as the Japs are "wpnders" on such things. The peo- 
ple are exceedingly kind and courteous, and I don't 
think one-thousandth part of them know anything 
about the California troubles. The Americans are 
pouring too big a stream of gold into Japan for them 
to want any trouble. 

Here for the first time I ate bamboo root. It has 
an orris root taste and also, I fancied, a sachet smell. 

Yesterday I spent at the beautiful and gorgeous 
temple which I am forwarding some photos of. 
When you have read this kindly mail to my mother, 
and I have asked her to send you some I am sending 
to her. I want to keep them finally as a sort of 

58 



diary, because I don't want any of the memories of 
this country to get away from me. Japan is full of 
the above-enclosed leaves, which are, however, ex- 
ceedingly small as compared with ours. I send a wild 
azalia bloom, and a double, and a single cherry blossom. 
With kindest regards to all there, 

Yours truly, 

H. B. 



Hakone district, 
Fujiya Hotel — Miyanoshita, 

Japan, April 24. 
My dear Mother: 

After we left Tokio, we cooped ; the old gentleman 
and his wife at Yokohama, as he had a cold, and 
came here today to see the prettiest place in all 
Japan, and Fujiyama. 

From Yokohama to Kozu station it taks a little 
over an hour on the train. To Yumoto it is ten miles 
further and a hard push of four miles more in rik- 
shaws brings you to Miyanoshita. Three men pushed 
each rickshaw in order to negotiate the steep hills, 
but it was a fine road with retaining walls of splendid 
masonry. 

Fujiyama's 12,365 feet tower over a fair country 
and fade into a mirrored likeness in Lake Hakone. 
The picture nestles there like the mirage of a snow 
storm. The legend is that before the time of Christ 
the mountain was born in one night. The peasants 

59 



near call it "the Honorable Mountain," and formerly 
no woman was allowed to climb higher than the 
eighth of its ten stations. Nearly twenty thousand 
pilgrims ascend the mountain every year, much as 
Mohammedans go to Mecca. 

They say "Fuji," as they familiarly call their beauti- 
ful sacred mountain, is one of the illusions of Japan, 
as the clouds frequently obscure it for days together. 
After two hours on the train, we got to the first 
stop. In the main town the ladies had tea handed 
in very nice little pots with a cup over the top of 
each. The courier I have travelling with me paid 
for the tea. I asked him how much, and he said 
four cents Japanese, or two cents United States 
money, for five cups of tea, three pots and three 
cups. The latter are yours if you want to keep 
them. So you can see I am not in an extravagant 
country. At the station we went into a little tea 
house to eat the luncheon our courier had brought 
from the hotel. We had sandwiches in wooden boxes 
and the queer little rice cakes stuffed with a paste 
made of beans and sugar. , The doors and windows 
all slide, and the sashes are filled with paper instead 
of glass. The top is made of wooden squares, and 
the whole effect is that of a doll's house. The whole 
country impresses you the same way. After an hour 
on a train (and we could have ridden on the auto 
for the same price) we again took jinrickshas for 
a two hours climb up here. The tram car, which 
was divided into first and second class, ran its five 
miles very slowly, and constantly rang a large din- 
ner bell to keep people off the track. We passed the 

60 



most interesting little villages where we could see the 
real Japanese life in the open houses. The climb up 
thq zig-zag mountain road was very, very beautiful. 
This place is much south of anything we have seen, 
and is between the two bays of Odawara and Suruga. 

The foliage is just as I always imagined a tropical 
forest. Giant feathery bamboos are side by side with 
great cryptomerias, and every shade of the coolest 
and sunniest green imaginable. There are white-blos- 
somed pear vines that they train on arbors here as 
we do grapes, and very deep red "weeping cherry 
trees," also the single-blossom cherries and the double- 
blossom, almost as big as hydrangeas, and big pink 
camelias, as large as American beauties, on trees thirty 
feet high, and a tangled mass of grass and brambles 
and bamboos that certainly is a surprising thing to 
find on mountains. After a two hours' climb, with 
our eight 'rickshaw men pulling and pushing our four 
baby carriages, we got to this hotel, which is on the 
side of a rocky hill full of cascades. Back of the 
hotel is a very beautiful garden with fountains and 
Japanese effects. 

The hotel is a group of cottages all joined in a 
long crescent. After a certain hour at night every 
door is locked except the front door in the main office 
of the middle building, and you must go through that 
to get to your cottage. 

It is a typical Japanese hotel. The rooms are fur- 
nished in light materials, and on each bed is laid a suit 
of pajamas corresponding to the wall paper for the 
men, and kimonos and a sash for the ladies. The fur- 
niture is all covered with Japanese cretonnes (if I 

61 



have the right word) and the windows have bamboo 
sash without glass or anything in them. The servants 
are curiosities, all dressed with their quaint little 
kimonos and obis. Their hair is done up carefully with 
always a flower or other ornament in it. The whole 
effect is like, as I believe I told you, the opera 
"Mikado." 

At four o'clock the three of us walked up to see 
Fuji. The guide always "ducks" these climbs, and this 
one took an hour to the tea house on Senegayama 
Hill where you see the great sacred snow-capped peak. 
At first it was obscured by clouds, but later they 
lifted and showed by far the most impressive mountain 
I have ever seen. Nothing is visible except the clean 
snowy sides, and it looks like a great cone of sugar 
with the top clipped off in irregular lines. There are 
three distinct ridges we could see from here, which 
seem to divide it into great over-lapping sections. 
After waiting an hour, where it was quite cold so high, 
we saw the sun »set. Strange to say, after the sun 
went down we could see the mountain much more dis- 
tinctly ; and the outlines were gilded by a mellow glow, 
looking half gold, half silver. 

One of the prettiest walks near Miyanoshita is to the 
Gold Fish Tea House, where the little lake in front is 
rilled with gold fish which the visitors feed with small 
bags of crumbs. This is one of the most exquisite 
spots anywhere, and the resort of everybody who loves 
the beautiful. Miniature rivulets and cascades tumble 
through great fresh masses of green into the pretty 
pond bordered with flowers and cherry and maple 
trees. There is also a beautiful T / 2 mile walk to 

62 



Kojigoku (which means "Small Hell") hot sulphur 
springs. 

Coming back to the hotel, we saw at the roadside 
the famous collossal image of JIZO which is carved 
cameo style like the lion of Lucerne, on a perpendicular 
block of andesite (granite). 

Moonlight is "predicted" tonight, but I will not see 
Fuji by it. Tomorrow we go to Hakone where they 
say you can see it from its base in the Lake to its 
white top. From here we join the old gentleman and 
his wife at Nagoya about day after tomorrow. I find 
three weeks will give us ample time to finish up here 
and sail for Shanghai the ninth of May. 

I wish you were here to help me enjoy it, but the 
trip would have been too hard for you. 

Your loving son, 

H. B. 



Miyanoshita, Japan, 
(57 miles Southwest of Tokio), 

April 25th. 
My dear Mr. Hayward : 

You get so many impressions of Japan and so many 
of them are obvious, that it is hard to choose among 
them to write about. The first thing I noticed was all 
the 'rickshaw men and nearly all the coolies wearing 
cheap blouses with the most Japanese figures on them. 

63 



I was very curious about it and finally found that 
many of them were advertisements given the wearers, 
who were literally "backing" the enterprise. 

Of course, the next things are the babies. It is 
quite usual to see one of them strapped on its older 
sister's back, because most of them are carried until 
they are three years old in this unique fashion. The 
babies' arms are placed in position to embrace the 
bearer's neck. Then a heavy cotton string ties him 
close to the back. Then clothes are thrown over him 
and then another string around his waist that is also 
wound round his mother's shoulder. By this time, 
it is hard to see where the sister or mother leaves 
off and the baby begins. Men who have studied the 
question say that this "babying" of the Japanese chil- 
dren for such a long time is a great drain upon the 
vitality of the mother, and also that the short legs of 
the Japanese are the result of being carried until they 
are three or four years old. 

At Yokohoma, I saw a great number of them with 
the most atrocious skin diseases on their usually 
shaven tops. It seems to be against the law to use 
their handkerchiefs, so the whole effect is not pleasing. 
But the clean ones are so cute that you forgive the 
others. 

The following is a somewhat brief diary of what we 
do. After breakfast, — just about the same things we 
eat in America — our guide gets four 'rickshaws. One 
for the pretty girl, one for the widow, one for me, and 
one for himself. They never make them wide enough 
for two. The Fritzi Scheff girl looks pretty good under 
a big American hat and a blue and white paper um- 

64 



brella, and our cavalcade attracts a good deal of atten- 
tion from the peasants. They are very polite and 
don't laugh where we can see them, but I can look 
back frequently and see them as nearly convulsed as 
Orientals ever get at our strange clothes and hats. 
Every once in a while we pass one of the practically naked 
children. We pretend not to see and pass on. A 
great many of the kids say "Ohayo" which means 
"good-day." And sometimes in the morning they 
will say quite distinctly "good evening." Most of 
the well-to-do Japs wear their kimonos with American 
or English felt hats. The people are as busy as bees 
in their little shops that front the streets, wide open 
in the day and closing with sliding shutters at night. 
The peculiar thing I have noticed is that notwith- 
standing the enormous number of babies, you hardly 
ever see any indication of an expected increase in the 
population. I don't know whether the mother's re- 
ligion requires her to keep herself secluded, or whether 
her clothes are worn looser. Another thing, you hardly 
ever see any lame or blind people. The latter are 
nearly all shampooers or masseurs, and blow a small 
whistle to announce their coming. Every night in the 
small towns a watchman parades round and round 
with a lantern. He constantly rings a bell so that 
spooners or burglars can have timely notice. 

The native water here cannot be used by foreigners, 
because the sewage is used for fertilizer and the mountain 
streams wash over it in the local system of irrigation. 

The lower classes seem to have a hard time. I have 
often seen one small man pull with his hands and the 
shoulder strap a cart of two wheels carrying a big 

65 



telegraph pole. Frequently, if the load is too heavy, 
a pusher assists at one end of the back corners of the 
wagon. I have seen a small woman with a baby on 
her back pushing this way. Then they carry no end 
of things on the bamboo poles that they wear across 
the backs of their necks. In the country, you see 
women standing knee-deep in the rice fields at work. 
Most of the lower class of working women wear a 
sort of cotton jeans breeches, generally of blue 
material. 

Some places in the mountains you will see long 
bamboo pipe lines to carry water from very numerous 
hot springs. We passed yesterday from Miyanoshita 
to Nagoya through miles of tea plantations. This tea 
shrub, as you know, does not grow big and seems to 
be usually not more than three feet high, always with 
an umbrella-shape like a box-wood. It seems to re- 
quire uplands or hill-sides. The rice, as you know, 
grows in the water, and the rice lagoons, which are 
quite shallow, are about fifty to one hundred feet 
square. There are thousands of these lagoons. 

The Japs plant the green oats in rows, and fre- 
quently between them are roAVS of pretty pink flowers. 
There are thousands of accurately marked squares of 
mustard, and often side by side with the same sorts 
of squares are some purple flowers. 

When we get to sacred spots, off go our shoes and 
over our socks we put slushy, flimsy, felt cotton 
sandals. The only way you can get on is to turkey- 
trot over the polished floors. 

'Rickshaws cost about fifteen cents an hour. They 
are very comfortable, and you get to like them very 

66 



much. Today, as I passed along, I saw inside a great 
many of the little one story houses. The people in 
them were beating short tom-toms. The guide says 
that they were trying to make it stop raining. In 
front of the drum is set a plate of raw rice, then paper 
flags, and nuts and raw fish to appease the deities. It 
hasn't stopped raining yet. 



Your friend 



H. B. 



Nagoya, Japan, 
April 27. 
Dear Uncle Charlie : 

The Nagoya Hotel is the best hotel in Nagoya. It 
is the only hotel in Nagoya. 

There are nearly 450,000 people here. 

The Nagoya castle is a disappointment inside, al- 
though from the outside the lines are very good from 
a Jap's point of view. It is white, as you know, with 
two gold dolphins about nine feet high at the end of 
the ridge pole. Including the eyes of silver, these 
birds cost a hundred and eighty thousand dollars. 
I am sending you the original of my special permit 
to see this castle. The apartments of the castle con- 
tain very remarkable pictures, mostly on wood, of 
tigers, bamboos, cherry and plum blossoms, and pheas- 
ants by the greatest artists that Japan has ever pro- 
duced. There is nothing else in Nagoya, so I go to- 
night to Nara to spend a day before going to Kioto. 

67 



At the railroad station the guide carefully checks 
our luggage and we go over the tracks by steps and an 
over-pass to the passenger cars. "First class" has the 
seats run lengthwise and divided by arm-rests which 
fold up and can be put out of the way. Just before 
starting, an attendant wipes up the oil-cloth floor with 
a wet rag, to lay the germs. The window sashes are 
about like ours and they have little red curtains on a 
tiny rod. 

The other night I believe we discovered where the 
fashion of Damascene started. We had been watching 
for the moon (and the watchman with the lantern 
and the bell) for some time. Finally it arose and 
lighted a pine tree on the horizon with a beautiful 
golden light. Here was Damascene. The outlines 
of the pine made the black line, and the moon fur- 
nished the gold just as the Demascene pattern is. 
It was very beautiful and fully lived up to the guide 
books description of "enjoying at Nagoya". 

This is all until I try again to write in a jiggly little 
Japanese train. 

With best regards to all, 

Yours very truly, 

H. B. 



68 



Nara Hotel, 
Nara, Japan, 

April 28. 
Dear Gene : 

Here I am 7 hours southwest of Nagoya at Nara, 
which for seven reigns was the capital of Japan. 

I have been very busy comparing Oriental and Occi- 
dental civilizations for two weeks. I find that the 
job takes longer. There are a great many amusing 
things here, and a great many suggesting serious 
thought. I saw in a local paper last night two striking 
articles. One in which Lord Wolsey was quoted as 
saying the Chinese was the greatest Oriental race, 
and that some day there would be a great war between 
China and the Oriental allies, and America and the Oc- 
cidentals. In the same paper there was a telegram 
from China that the new Chinese parliament had 
formally asked the prayers of the Missionaries in China 
to guide them in framing new laws. You know I am 
not as much of a religionist as you are, but it is a 
very peculiar thing that progress followed Commodore 
Perry's coming to Japan, and that development goes 
hand in hand with Christianity everywhere. The ene- 
mies of the Missionary Idea say that it is not because 
the Christian religion is introduced, but because the 
Missionaries teach a great many useful things to the 
natives. 

Japan is a fairyland of gardens and pink and yellow 
fields and quaint houses and temples, but most of 
all in interest are the people. They are as busy as bees 
all day at their work, but they never hurry. They 

69 



live on very little food, seem to be always well and 
happy, and the country seems to be very prosperous. 
Of course, from our point of view, they are very super- 
stitious and spend no end of time praying over rice 
cakes and beating tom-toms to make it stop raining, 
but in the temples themselves I don't see many people 
except the sight-seers and pilgrims from the country. 

The three predominant characteristics seem to me to 
be love and care of trees and flowers, ancestor worship, 
and industry, all of them good enough for any moralist. 

I went to the courts the other day in Tokio. The 
lawyers wear black gowns and a queer peaked cap. 
In the waiting rooms the lawyers smoke cigarettes and 
drink tea while awaiting their cases. There is one 
divorce to every three marriages, generally obtained by 
the man, as a woman who applies for one loses caste. 
Frequently when divorced (the man always wins) the 
wife commits suicide — "hari-kari". 

The roads, especially when you consider they are 
made only for small wagons and jinrickshaws, are 
very fine, with great protecting walls of the blocks 
into which the rocks here crumble. At night the jin- 
rickshaw men solemnly attach a Japanese lantern 
(candle inside) as a headlight, and merrily plod along. 

To day I saw all growing on a single tree trunk a 
cambia, a cherry, wistaria, and four other kinds. In 
its twigs optimistic lovers had tied prayers and vows 
written on tiny pieces of paper. 

In a temple dedicated to Kwannon, the god of 
mercy, there is a small copper effigy which fable says 
is always as warm as a living body. On the 18th of 
each month it is exposed for adoration. 

70 



The most interesting object at Nara is a great 
Buddha fifty-three feet high, larger indeed than the 
Kamakura one but vastly inferior from an artistic 
point of view. 

Of the curios in the Sho-so-in Museum behind the 
Daibutsu, Captain Brinkley says in his Japan and 
China : 

"The story these relics tell is that the occupants of 
the Nara palace had their rice served in small covered 
cups of stoneware, with celadon glaze — these from 
Chinese potteries, for as yet the manufacture of verifi- 
able glazes was beyond the capacity of Japanese cera- 
mists ; ate fruit from deep dishes of white agate ; 
poured water from golden ewers of Persian form, 
having birdshaped spouts, narrow necks and bands of 
frond diaper; played the game of GO on boards of 
rich laquer, using discs of white jade and red coral for- 
ieces ; burned incense in censers of bronze inlaid with 
gems, and kept the incense in small boxes of Paul- 
lownia wood with gold laquer decoration — these of 
Japanese make — or in receptacles of Chinese celadon ; 
wrote with camel's hair brushes having bamboo 
handles, and placed them upon rests of prettily carved 
coral ; employed plates of nephrite to rub down sticks 
of Chinese ink; sat upon the cushioned floor to read 
or write ; placing the book or paper on a low lectern 
of wood finely grained or ornamented with laquer ; set 
up flowers in slender, long-necked vases of bronze 
with a purple patina ; used for a pillow a silk covered 
bolster stuffed with cotton and having designs em- 
broidered in low relief; carried long, straight, two- 
edged swords attached to the girdle by strings (not 

71 



thrust into it, as afterwards became the fashion) ; 
kept their writing materials in boxes of colored or 
gold laquer; saw their faces reflected in mirrors of 
polished metal, having the back repousse' and chiselled 
in elaborate designs ; kept their mirrors in cases lined 
with brocaded silk; girdled themselves with narrow 
leather belts, ornamented with plaques of silver or 
jade and fastened by means of buckles exactly similar 
to those used in Europe or America to-day ; and played 
on flutes made of bamboo wood." 

But we first saw the Shinto temple Kasagujinsha, 
which is approached through a walk bordered by three 
thousand stone lanterns. No two men ever arrive at 
the same result in counting them, and no one man gets 
the same result twice. 

At the telephone, (which in this country is not "in- 
stantaneous") the opening words are "mushy-mushy" 
(honorable good morning). The good-bye is "please 
excuse the disgusting effrontery of my existence". You 
can see how speedy this is. You can beat a government 
telegram to its destination, and can on an uphill 
climb distance any train. Americans are very ac- 
tive here, and so far as I can see, there is no feeling 
against us. Probably the great mass of the people 
don't know where America is. 

"Pidgin English" is a remarkably expressive lingo 
in which the Japanese and the Chinese especially make 
themselves understood by English speaking people. It 
contains only three hundred words, but the Chinaman 
is not a verbose individual and he finds all he needs 
in this dialect of positives and negatives. For instance 
"can do", and its negative "no can do". 

72 



A word about Japanese girls and women. I saw a 
great many of them beautifully and artistically dressed, 
but I only saw one really beautiful Japanese woman 
in Japan. I believe she was an Eurasian because her 
features were very clear cut and she had a majesty 
about her walk that these women of Japan don't have. 
As usual in miscegenation, she follows her Japanese an- 
cestors in being dark. 

This is all except that I haven't eaten the wish-bones 
of any rats yet. 

I thank you and mother so much for your steamer 
telegram. 

Your loving brother, 

H. B. 



Nara Hotel, 
Nara, Japan, April 28th. 

My dear Mother: 

I left Nagoya and a very bad hotel last night, and 
reached this beautiful spot at 9 o'clock. Nara is very 
attractive, but as usual, I will not try to describe it. 
Instead, 1 am sending the photos. We went to the 
Temples today, saw the hundreds of tame deer whose 
horns are sawed off as a religious ceremony once a 
year, and then fashioned into canes and ornaments. I 
am going to buy Julia a full regalia of a Japanese 
maiden's obi, kimono, and hair ornaments. I think 
she will look very sweet in it. I will get your silk 
in China. 

73 



I cabled you as I thought you might be worried about 
the Japanese-American friction. We hear nothing of 
it here, and nothing has occurred to mar the perfection 
of the trip. 

I hope you are all well. I have heard nothing from 
America since I left. 

With lots of love to all of you. 

Your loving son, 

H. B. 



Kyoto Hotel, 
Kyoto, Japan, 
April 30. 
My dear Aunt Kate : 

Kyoto is only 3 hours south of Nara. 

The weather is always the same in the Spring in 
Japan. Every day nearly there is a soft misty rain so 
gentle and mild that it is more like a caress than a 
shower. You get used to it and go out just as if the 
sun was shining. 

I don't believe I have written since Miyanoshita. 
That is the resort for the beautiful mountain scenery 
of Japan, and I never imagined anything could be so 
beautiful. After two fine days I got to Nagoya, and 
there one night was enough. Nothing there except 
one untenanted castle, as bare as a barn floor. From 
there we went to Nara, through the very green tea 
fields where the plants are covered with matting to 
keep out the frost. There were some very pretty 

74 



temples there and the best hotel I ever stayed in. But 
one day is enough to see the fawns in the park and 
the museum, and the very lovely wistarias. We got 
here night before last, where we found the "old folks" 
again. Yesterday, we went to the private gardens of a 
Japanese gentleman who took great pains to show us 
through, but who spoke not a word of English. I told 
him "arigato" (in Japanese "thank you") and he 
seemed repaid. He gave us the souvenir postals I am 
mailing you. Next to the Earl of Kenmare's, his was 
the finest garden I ever saw. 

Last night I saw the Damascene process of making 
the same work that they call "Toledo" in Spain. 
Cloisonne is the ware that is made by filling between 
the little silver cloisons (wires) the artificial paste that 
hardens into lovely enamels. After the copper or brass 
or silver wires have been stuck in and the paste has 
been polished, the effect is an exquisite mosaic of metal 
and enamel. 

Afterwards, we went to the famous cherry dance. 
It was the queerest experience I have yet had. In a 
beautiful one story wooden theatre covered with mat- 
ting, we removed our shoes and put on sandals, and 
went into an ante-room. After a tedious half hour's 
wait, we went to the "tea ceremony". About fifteen 
people seated on little stools with mats on top to make 
them soft (the stools not the heads) in front of lac- 
quered black tables about knee high. After much more 
waiting, a geisha came in and solemnly seated herself 
at a table in full view of "us foolish ones" and in a very 
mechanical way poured out a teaspoonful of tea in a 
large three gallon pot of hot water, then with a red 

75 



silk handkerchief she gave a few more mechanical 
twists and took the top off the pot of boiling water, 
while we, "the imbeciles" as the French call them, 
kept waiting for something to happen. 

Finally a little baby Japanese girl about two feet 
high and dressed just like a doll, arose and made a low 
bow before the tea-making geisha, who handed her a 
bowl of something. She toddled over to me, as I was 
nearest, and placed the bowl before me. All the Eng- 
lish looked jealous, and everybody from the United 
States was trying to keep a straight face. I picked 
up the bowl and found it was almost an extract of tea, 
green as pea soup. I tasted it and set it down again. 
Other Geishaettes about the size of Mrs. Tom Thumb, 
then served everybody with bowls of tea and a little 
snowball of rice, with a sweet paste made of beans 
inside. The guests took away the queer looking saucer 
and chop sticks. Not a word was spoken except by a 
crying baby, who was taken out. Then after another 
interminable delay, the "tea ceremony" being over, 
we left the sweet little children and went into the main 
theatre. This was exquisite in natural wood with silk 
curtains on both sides and red silk lanterns hanging 
close together the whole way round. The drop curtain 
was of embroidered white silk and across it was a very 
handsome trailing pine tree. After the hoi polloi had 
squatted on the cheap floor in front of our gallery 
seats (the best) and been told to take off their hats, 
the curtains on both sides rose at once disclosing on 
the right twelve samisen (a musical instrument for 
ear torture) players dressed alike in very sober pretty 
costumes, and on the left twelve tom-tom punishers, 

76 



who held their hands horizontally in front and in this 
stiff attitude beat their little drums, occasionally strik- 
ing a horrible sounding triangle every time our ears 
were about to get rested. They sang in a screech that 
was a cross between a back fence yeowl and the soft 
purring of a file across the teeth of a saw. Then the 
dancers (geishas) came on in very beautiful blue 
kimonos embroidered with the most exquisite cherry 
blossoms, and each carried part of the time a fan, and 
part a red umbrella. When they finished with one or 
the other of these, they would drop them behind them, 
and a "Supe" would walk in and pick them up. There 
was absolutely no action in the dancing, and the tom- 
toms and samisens kept up a frightfully strident noise, 
but the posturing of the dancers was very sweet, and 
the coloring of the costumes was like a wonderful 
dream. The amusing and very ingenious feature of 
the show was the totally unexpected way in which a 
wistaria arbor, or a cherry tree, or a snow mountain 
would suddenly pick itself up and go up into the air, 
or slide off to the right or the left of the stage. In 
one case a whole scene went through the floor and 
everything turned wrong side out and into something 
else. I am sending you a little pamphlet about it 
which partially describes some of the changes. The 
whole cherry dance cost for best seats seventy-five 
cents. 

This morning I went, by special permit from the 
government, through the two Imperial palaces. They 
are jewel boxes of carved wood with wonderful pic- 
tures and grounds. This afternoon I saw the biggest 
temples in Japan, almost as big floor space as St. 

77 



Peters and with columns like those Solomon's temple 
must have been. They are not painted and lacquered 
like those at Nikko, and are therefore less interesting. 

I spent an hour in a silk store buying Julia a little 
pink kimono to go with the "obi" I have for her. 
Today I went to see the beautiful cloisonne. The new 
style is very fine, pretty and cheap. 

A heart full of love, and wish you were with me. 
I think of you all the time. 

Your loving nephew, 

H. B. 



Kyoto, Japan, 

May 1, 
Dear Bob : 

I am sending you a picture of my house and garden 
in Kyoto. It is a £pot to forget your troubles in, and 
the grounds occupy all of the court and yard of the 
Nakamurara Hotel. In the centre of the garden is a 
little doll sized lake with rocks at the edges that gives 
it the striking Japanese effect, and there are little 
islands, on one of which has been carved from the 
stunted pine tree a full rigged ship, and there are lovely 
little paths, and in the back a wilderness of azaleas, 
white and pink all in bloom. The little trail around 
to the small wooden gate that opens into my private 
grounds passes over a pretty stone bridge with lan- 
terns on each side (the whole thing is not four feet 
long) and the front door of my wood and paper house 

78 



is apparently only a small outside wall. But it is a 
shoji that slides as far open as you care to have your 
door. Then there are four little rooms, with not a 
stick of furniture in them, and cool green matting on 
the floor. There is a sort of kitchen, and water runs 
cold and clear through a little bamboo pipe that brings 
it from the mountain above. Facing the little lake is 
a moon-gazing veranda that I am afraid will not be 
used, and by it a big stone font into which the mountain 
water trickles all day. On the little veranda there are 
pots of flowers, just, one or two, and when I come in 
there are always flowers on a shelf in a big high 
vase. My factotum is a constant nuisance; he wants 
to know every minute if there isn't something the 
"master" wants, when all the master wants is to be 
let alone and live in this unreal life for two or three 
days. At night he comes in and solemnly pulls the 
bed clothes (there are no mattresses) out of a drawer 
at the bottom of the wall and makes up the bed. 
But I have quit sleeping here since the rains began 
because it is too cold, so I sit around in the day time 
refusing, to his great disgust, to pull off my shoes when 
I come in, and in the afternoon have some of our party 
to tea. At night we frequently walk down here and 
sit for an hour listening to the geishas strumming their 
samisens in a sort of cabaret which is run by the hotel 
across the lake. The place was so fascinating that 
I ordered the photographer to make some photographs 
for members of our party. And I told the "master's" 
servant I wanted to buy the big Japanese paper lan- 
terns. When I paid for them I found they had charged 
about ten times their price, and when I paid my bill 

79 



they were on the bill too and I paid for them again, and 
when I started to go the master's servant rushed 
up with a wash-list-looking piece of paper and said 
he had forgotten to put the lanterns on the bill. I 
paid again, because for all my three days house and 
grounds and meals and drinks and three times for the 
lanterns and for the photographs, T only handed him 
eleven yen, five dollars and a half. After a few more 
minutes the ceremonious "boy", as he announced him- 
self, came in and made a low bow and said the master 
was so impressed with the American appreciation of 
his hospitality that he begged that I would take the 
lanterns with his compliments as a souvenir. This 
broke the camel's back with a loud report, and we 
couldn't keep straight faces any longer. 

The last day I was there a friend and I had quar- 
reled over some small matter, and when we had each 
about decided we were wrong, an enormous black 
butterfly fluttered into the open shoji and fell dead 
at our feet. Fortunately, neither of us was supersti- 
tious. 

Sincerely, 

H. B. 



Kioto Hotel, 
Kyoto, Japan, 

May 1. 
My dear Aunt Mary : 

Yesterday we passed near a Japanese kindergarten. 
The guide got permission and we went in. It looked 
like a doll factory, and you should have seen the 

80 



antics the children cut with their funny little clothes 
and the sandals which only covered their soles. 

I sent out for a dollars worth of the foolish little 
cakes they have here, and after nearly an hour's 
honorable delay, the teacher put five pieces wrapped 
in colored tissue paper on each child's desk. After 
another long ceremonial delay, each child wrapped his 
cakes up and took them home to his parents, to get 
their permission to eat them. Imagine anything like 
that in our family ! 

In the morning we went to the beautiful "Imperial 
Summer Gardens" designed by the government land- 
scape architect, and it was like a beautiful dream — 
too exquisite to be real. 

Today I saw the great Buddhist temple with 
"thirty-three thousand" images of KWAN-NON, the 
goddess of mercy. I made a rough estimate and there 
are probably twelve hundred, which is enough. In the 
head of one of these images is a skull which found its 
way there as follows : Go Shirakawa, a Mikado, had 
head-aches. One night, while praying, an Indian monk 
told him that he had in a former life been a priest, 
but that when he was changed into a mikado, they 
forgot his skull. This lay at the bottom of the river 
with a willow sapling growing out of it, which veered 
with varying winds and caused the head-ache. When 
the Mikado found this particular skull, he ordered it 
put into the head of the aforesaid Kwannon — result, 
no more headaches. The unthinking ascribed that 
headache to too much spiritual exaltation the night 
before. 

Cormorant fishing, done nowhere else, is practiced 

81 



here by the fishermen of Japan. The cormorant having 
been caught with bird lime is tied round the body with 
a strong string, with which it is let into the water to 
fish. Around the bird's neck at the lower end is a 
metal ring or band which prevents them from swallow- 
ing completely the big fish they catch but is big 
enough to let small ones pass in. A dozen or so birds 
fish at once. In the meantime the fish are attracted 
by the noise made with a piece of bamboo by one of 
the men in the boat. When one of the birds catches 
a fish, which is lodged between its mouth and the ring 
at the lower end of its neck, the fisherman pries its 
mouth open and presses out the fish. A fisherman 
will catch a hundred or so with each bird an hour. 
After the fishing is over if the birds have failed to 
squeeze enough through the ring to satisfy their 
hunger, they are solemnly fed. 

I will go on the Buelow for Shanghai on the 4th 
of May. 

I have bought you a beautiful black Damascene 
vanity case. It is black steel with gold Japanese 
inlaid work, and has a mirror inside and a place for 
powder puff, &c. I have bought Julia a beautiful 
little kimono and obi (or Japanese sash). I also have 
some Japanese hair ornaments for her. I am so busy 
seeing things that I have not much time to write. 
The weather is bad, as it is cloudy or rains a bit 
every day, usually in the morning. I arrive at Shang- 
hai on the 8th of May. 

Lots of love again, and wish you were with me. 
As ever, affectionately, 

H. 

82 



Kioto Hotel, 
Kioto, Japan, May 1st. 



Dear Charlie : 



I am about through with what you call my "work" 
in seeing Japan. Sometimes, I almost agree with you 
that sightseeing is tiresome, but I never expected to 
see half the beautiful things and none of the marvelous 

scenery I have (as "Uncle" Jimmie says) 

"saw". I am going down the Inland sea to Nagasaki 
and will arrive in Shanghai the night of the 12th of 
May. I finished here about a week earlier than I 
expected, which will give me that much more time in 
China. I am leaving here at the time the war scare 
seems to be getting a little acute, but all I see of it is 
in the newspapers. The people, especially the children, 
greet us every foot of the way with "Konichi-wa", 
which, as you know perfectly well, means "honorable 
good morning". I believe I can stay any war feeling 
that may arise, at a total cost of one "yen" (50 cents 
in United States money.) I certainly see no signs of 
jingoism in the 'rickshaw men or the tourists hotels. 
But I see by the papers that the Chinese are also 
trying to get up a North and South war. I am in 
favor of it if we can get our silk, rice and fans any 
cheaper. Besides, I like the Chinese system of warfare, 
which is a combination of speed and long distance, 
much better than the Japanese style. I think in 
baby dolls, jinrickshaws, and yen, and temples, and 
have forgotten I ever lived in a real land. I expect 
to wake up about July 1st when I will probably give 
a few promissory and renewable notes just to show 

83 



that I have not forgotten my early training. I am 
getting up a line of Gulliverisms to accompany the 
costly bric-a-brac that I am collecting at enormous 
expense (of time). A great many Japs have made 
me valuable presents, consisting of bamboo shoots, 
native herbs, and what appear to be wash-lists, so 
that I feel that my coming has not been in vain. 

After three weeks study of the language, I find I 
can understand myself when I give my whole mind 
to a Japanese word, and speak slowly. 

Love to all. 

Your affectionate brother, 

H. 



Kyoto, Japan, 

May 2nd. 
Dear John G. : 

If I write too much about Kyoto, it is because it is 
"the soul of Japan". Yesterday I went to the wonder- 
ful gilt shrine of Shaka in Saga-no Shaka-do Buddhist 
temple. It is behind the altar and two sets of doors 
and two beautiful embroidered curtains. The fable is 
that the image was carved while Shaka was on a 
journey to Heaven. On his return from the celestial 
regions, the image came down to meet him at the foot 
of the monastery steps, after which it went in again 
with him. 

The Nijo castle is not open to the public. It was 
here that in 1868 the last Mikado granted to the people 

84 



the right to settle matters by popular voice, and gave 
them their assembly. After going through the Kara- 
mon, which has some remarkable metal work and 
painted wood carvings, you go through the apartments. 
The word used is hinokei, except the doors, which are 
of cryptomeria. The nails and irons are concealed by 
gilded copper fastenings, beautifully wrought by hand, 
depicting peonies and birds. On one side of some of 
the exquisite wood carvings are shown birds or animals 
and on the other side flowers or trees. Through doors 
on which lions, tigers and storks positively look you 
in the eye, we went to the "Hall of Audiences", which 
actually dazzles you with the gold of its decorations. 
There are secret closets in the walls here where guards 
kept vigil, and there are two levels of the floor, where 
the mighty, and the humble sat. The walls are decor- 
ated with exceedingly large pictures of the crypto- 
meria. 

The Katsura Summer Palace is also interesting with 
its moon-gazing platform, and its formal garden, one 
of the best in Japan. At the Tojii temple, legend 
tells us that the pagoda began to lean a la tower of 
Pisa. But after Kobo had prayed awhile, it rose to its 
upright position. The skeptical think this was due to 
the fact that the wise Kobo dug a pond on the hill- 
side. But why spoil a perfectly good story? 

At the Buddhist temple of Myoho-In are the gold 
image of Shaka, with the diamond eyes which the king 
of Siam gave in 1902; the Daibutsu, which is hollow; 
and the great bell fourteen feet high and nine feet 
across, which weighs nearly one hundred and thirty 
thousand pounds. 

85 



Near the Hobuku-Jinja is the curious mound where 
are buried some three hundred thousand Corean ears 
and noses which were brought here by the Japanese 
soldiers in the five years war which began in 1592. In 
the Nishi Hongwanji temple is a queer panel of the 
Chinese hero who is washing his ear to rid it of the 
contamination caused by the Japanese Emperor's pro- 
posal to him that he resign his throne. The opposite 
side of the picture represents a cow whose Japanese 
owner objects to the Chinese hero's pollution of the 
stream where he was watering the cow. The apart- 
ments contain some very wonderful decorations of 
bamboo and sparrows, musk-rats, wild geese, monkeys, 
flowers, a sleeping cat under peonies. In the stork 
chamber, "the room of two hundred and fifty mats", 
are rare Chinese court scenes, birds, flowers, and trees. 

At the Higashi Hongwanji, a Buddhist temple, are 
the twenty-nine enormous cables made of human hair 
contributed by peasants of the Buddhist belief, to haul 
the great timbers of the temple. The building has two 
distinct roofs on which there are one hundred and 
seventy-five thousand tiles. It is one of the biggest 
houses in Japan, being 230 by 195 feet. 

The most important monastery in Japan is the 
Chion-In at Kyoto. It is on a fine hill reached through 
avenues of cherry blossoms. Its every available space 
is filled with ornamentation. On the right is the great 
bell of Japan, which weighs nearly seventy-four tons. 
It is rung by striking the end with a thick wooden 
beam. In front of the building are two lotuses of 
metal in bronze vases twenty feet high. Under one 
of the eaves of this house is carved an umbrella said to 

86 



have been blown out of the hands of a boy. In the 
library nearby there is a full set of the Buddhist canons. 
In the palace adjoining is the celebrated sparrow pic- 
ture, where the birds were so real they flew away. 
The pines painted on the veranda are so true to nature 
they are said to sweat rosin. 

Gonkakuji in Kyoto, the Silver Pagoda which its 
owner never had time to silver, is also very pretty. 
On entering the handsome garden, I was shown a 
silver sand platform where Yoshima held his "esthetic 
revels'*. His moon-gazing mound is just behind this. 
He had also a moon-washing fountain, and in his pond 
the "stone of ecstatic contemplation". The Pavilion 
houses an altar with a thousand small images of Jizo. 

The Shinto temple of Kami-Gamo carries with it a 
fable like Pharoah's daughter's discovery of Moses in 
the bull-rushes. A daughter of a god saw floating 
towards her a red-feathered arrow. Shortly she dis- 
covered that she was to become the mother of a son. 
The parents were skeptical ; and when the son was old 
enough to understand, they invited all their friends to 
a big feast where the child was told to give a wine-cup 
to his father. He rushed out and put it in front of 
the arrow which the mother had stuck into the thatch 
of the roof. Then after he had turned himself into a 
thunderbolt, he and his mother flew straight to Heaven. 
The guests departed, I believe, more or less disap- 
pointed. 

Faithfully yours, 

H. B. 
87 



Kioto, Japan, 

May 3rd. 



My dear Aunt Tallulah: 



I went for a beautiful trip through the country 
today to the "most beautiful garden in Japan". A place 
so very enchanting that I sat and looked at it for an 
hour, which is a long time for an Occidental to con- 
template anything. Of course, it seemed a rush view 
to these Orientals, one of whose gods sat nine years 
in solemn contemplation, until both his legs rotted 
and fell off. 

The country was very fresh, and the flowers were 
in even greater profusion than I have seen here be- 
fore. I am sending you some very inadequate photo- 
graphs of these gardens, which were designed by the 
most famous landscape artist here. His idea is to 
have no flowers, but get all his effect from trees, 
because they are part of the picture all the year round, 
while flowers fade .with the coming of the late summer 
and autumn. 

I saw yesterday the first sunset since I came. The 
mountains were as blue as indigo, and the going out 
of the day was as if a great golden ball was being let 
slowly down behind the line of deep azure. There was 
no after-glow and the twilight lasted but a short time. 
It was just yellow and blue with none of the other 
vivid colors we see in Georgia. I have bought some 
very interesting books, which I am mailing back to 
you as I read them. I have not had one line from my 
office or home, but hope the letters will catch me 
somewhere. We are getting away before we experi- 

88 



ence any of the acute stages of the feeling between 
Japan and America. I have spent my odd minutes 
lately reading Lefcadio Hearn, and about him. While 
he was a poseur, he was a wonderful painter of words, 
and the people swear by him here just as the Spaniards 
do by Washington Irving and Tales of the Alhambra. 

Coming here has given me a new interest in the 
East, and I will never get enough to read about the 
queer people and their beautiful land. I am sorry 
Evalyn and mother are not coming, but I suppose 
I ought to be as philosophical as possible, and spend 
the money I contributed to Evalyn's trip on the won- 
derful knick-knacks (if that's the way to spell them) that 
I find here. 

Kiss grandma for me. With lots of love, 
As ever, 

H. B. 



Kobe, Japan, 

May 4th. 
Dear Ida : 

This is where we begin the southwestern trip to 
Shimonoseki, through the Inland Sea. It is three- 
quarters of an hour's ride by train from Osaka, and the 
same distance from Kyoto. Kobe's imports and ex- 
ports are the largest in Japan. Here is made the best 
sake, and the beautiful basket work of Arima. 

Very near, and southwest of Kobe at Hyogo is the 
other big Buddha in bronze, forty-eight feet high and 
eighty-five feet around the waist, with a face eight and 

89 



a half feet high. Professor Chamberlain says the face 
is better than the Daibutsu's at Kamakura. Visitors 
can go inside the statue where there are many mirrors 
hanging — gifts of the devotees. 

Nearby in another Buddhist temple is an Amida in 
bronze set on a pedestal of stone in a lotus pool, and 
across the road from this is the thirteen storied pagoda 
monument to Kiyomori. 

The Nunobiki waterfalls are but a short distance 
from the splendid Tor Hotel in the City. 

Sincerely, 

H. B. 



Kobe, 
May 4. 
My dearest grandmother : 

I am here at Kobe, forty miles south of Kyoto, from 
whence I sail to Shanghai. I have been to Yokohoma 
where we landed in Japan ; Tokio, the Capital ; Nikko 
where the beautiful lacquered temples are in the pine 
tree groves ; back to Tokio ; then to Miyanoshita where 
the mountains are the most exquisite in the world; 
then to see the great snow-capped sacred mountain 
of Japan, Fujiyama, nearly thirteen thousand feet 
high ; then to see the Imperial castle at Nagoya ; then 
to Nara, where the priests cut the horns of a thousand 
fawns every year ; then to Kioto, the most interesting 
place in Japan. Here we saw the famous cherry dance, 
one of the most beautiful spectacles I ever saw, — not 
a dance, but a series of poses. After nearly a week 

90 



there we came through a beautiful blue mountain coun- 
try to Osaka, the biggest port in Japan. The Europ- 
ean influence here is so strong that it hardly seems a 
Japanese city, although the shops are full of interest- 
ing things, ancient and modern. Tomorrow we go 
down the "Inland Sea" to Shimonoseki, and from there 
to Nagasaki. This takes two days, and from there to 
Shanghai two days longer. I expect to finally reach 
New York early in July. I have seen so many beauti- 
ful things I am ashamed not to have brought all of you 
along with me. 

I hope you are well and strong and that you will 
take good care of yourself during the summer. I 
haven't seen any place I love as much as Atlanta, al- 
though I must admit it is not as beautiful as Japan. 
Lots of love to all of you. 

As ever, 

Your affectionate grandson, 

H. 



On the Inland Sea of Japan, 

May 4. 

Dear Joe and Mabel : 

On a comfortable modern steamer, we are ploughing 
through the dimpling waves of Japan's Inland Sea. 
There are two hundred and forty miles of it between 
here and Shimonoseki, through whose straits the ships 
pass south to Nagasaki or west to Tsing-Tau as I did. 
The widest part of the sea is less than forty miles. 

91 



The natives divide it into five sections, one of which 
is hardly wide enough for two ships to go through 
at once. The smaller islands are of every conceivable 
shape, and the larger ones are picturesquely moun- 
tainous and blue. The banks are studded in many 
places with small huts and the waters are always alive 
with small fishing smacks and other craft. There are 
so many near facts about this remarkable inside pas- 
sage that I will only tell you something of Miyajima 
the loveliest island in it. 

It is sacred ; likewise, it is rated as one of the three 
beautiful sights of Japan. In places it reaches an alti- 
tude of nearly two thousand feet, and it boasts some 
three thousand people. The island has many tame 
deer on it, and its maple and cherry trees, its tea 
houses, its picturesque huts and its torii, combine to 
make it one of the pretty spots of Earth. They say 
the first temple was built there in 593 A. D. No births 
or deaths are allowed on Miyajima. Mothers are sent 
to the shore of the Inland Sea thirty days before their 
children are expected. Neither are live nor dead dogs 
permitted there. The temple back of the torii which 
are pillared in the sea, at high tide itself appears to 
be built in the sea. On the right of the temple is the 
natural wood "Hall of a Thousand Mats", said to 
have been built entirely of one camphor wood tree. 
Very near the great Hall is a five storied pagoda, 
which, like the Chinese structures, follows the rule of 
always having an odd number of stories. 

I must tell you of the Bridge of the Damask Girdle 
crossing the Mishagawa at Iwakuni. Its five arches, 
one of which is repaired every five years, measure 

92 



450 feet. The piers are of stone and some of them 
held together with lead. 
No time to write more. 

Your friend, 

H. B. 



Inland Sea, 
May 5th. 
Dear Frank : 

They separated at Kobe, because ship accommoda- 
tion could not be had for her entire party and for The 
Diplomat too. If I had not known that it was built 
upon such a fictitious foundation the parting would 
have seemed heart-rending. All the afternoon they 
sat together in a secluded nook out of the sun, and 
even the Inland Sea of Japan didn't seem any too 
beautiful for their feelings. They would look far 
off to the horizon and just sit there and breathe, 
slowly. But the Worst part of it came when she took 
a tender to get out to his boat. She came down with 
eyes really red, and carried a big bunch of roses in 
her hands, and a full smoking-set she had ordered for 
him in the pretty Japanese Damascene of black and 
gold, and another package wrapped up like a small 
book. This he was told not to open until after she left, 
and he didn't. We left them alone in the moon-light 
and discreetly watched the sampans and the laborers, 
and after a last lingering glance she got on the 
tender and went back ashore with her friend, the other 

93 



widow. The Diplomat looked rather foolish with the 
bouquet of roses and his other packages, but he stuck 
to them until we steamed out of the harbor. Then he 
came over and thanked me for the interest I had taken 
and told me he was very happy, as he was going to be 
married as soon as God would let him. Then with a 
good deal of curiosity he tore open the small package. 
It was a copy of the Japanese "Sword and Blossom 
Poems" and it was turned down at the one called 
"Dew". It was short and to the point and it read (lest 
he should forget) : 

"Thou wilt return to me, 

Why should I 

I grieve 

For such short parting? 

Yea, thy words are true 

I will not weep — see these 

Are drops of Dew 

Not tears — not tears, 

That glitter on my sleeve". 
The author Kino Toshisada, evidently wrote this 
verse to order. Mashed between the leaves was an- 
other of those blue talismanic flowers. But just as he 
started to close the book there fell out of it a letter 
written by her in a sweet womanly hand, which he 
also read me. It was so good that anybody who 
could write it deserved any old diplomat she wanted, 
and it was written on soft table-napkin crinkled white 
paper with delicate bamboos across it. And bamboo 
in Japan is the emblem of loyalty. She hadn't over- 
looked a thing. Here is the letter, and I wish you 
could know what a delicate perfume it exhaled. I 

94 



asked him to let me copy it because it seemed like 
Kyoto, the "Soul of Jajan" — 

"What shall I wish for you ? Cherry blossoms beau- 
tiful, fleeting-wistaria, fragrant, suggestive of peace- 
ful twilights and unfrequented paths — violets, the shy 
heart of spring in color vanishing with the first 
warmth of summer — all lovely flowers and dreams — 

But for you of the great world realities must be 
woven in the fabric of life. So I choose bamboo-fidel- 
ity — to all the highest promptings of your nature — 
good fortune in all you undertake — success through 
perseverance — this loved plant though weighted to 
earth by winter's snows bends only — never breaks — 
evergreen at all seasons — May the spirit of eternal 
youth accompany you always, and lastly, happiness 
in its most radiant form constantly a companion be, 
making every day sweet and perfect as a Japanese 
landscape. Not only now but always will I hope for 
the fulfilment of my wish. 

I kiss thee honorable farewell comrade of dream 
days and beloved ever-by." 



H. B. 



Leaving Japan, May 7th. 
My dear Leon: 

The Buddhist priests managed Japan's education in 
medieval times. In the seventeenth century Confu- 
cianism took root, and then his analects were studied. 

95 



Some colleges were started in 1868, and now there is 
the great Imperial University at Tokyo. There are 
departments of law, agriculture, science, literature, en- 
gineering, and medicine, with thousands of students. 
Then there are commercial, normal, language, and 
technical schools, Blind and Dumb schools, and a col- 
lege of agriculture. As far back as 1905 there were 
27,000 primary schools with 118 teachers and over five 
millions of pupils, and there were over 250 middle 
schools with 95,000 scholars and nearly five thousand 
teachers. There are now many more government 
schools, teachers, and scholars ; as well as kinder- 
gartens, private colleges and missionary schools, an 
industrial school for girls, a female normal school, and 
a great Woman's University at Tokyo. 

A religious cousin of mine will I know be inter- 
ested in learning that the great Island of Formosa, 
which has been the subject of much diplomacy, was 
evangelized by pulling the teeth of the natives. They 
are great sufferers from tooth-ache because of the 
"severe malaria, beetle nut chewing to blacken them, 
cigar-smoking, and other filthy habits". One mis- 
sionary in particular, Rev. Dr. Mackay, pulled over 
twenty-one thousand teeth. 

The Japanese love to be clean and they are willing 
to endure over 110 degrees Fahrenheit to become so. 
Five hundred thousand people wash themselves daily 
in over 1100 public bath houses in Tokyo alone at an 
average cost of less than a penny each. Generally a 
barrier separates the male from the females, fre- 
quently this barrier is merely a small cord across the 

96 



water. Family bathing is economical because "the 
same bath does for all the members". The gentlemen 
usually take it first "then ladies, then children. At 
one mountain bathing-resort, bathers put a rock over 
their bodies to keep from floating — 

Japanese weddings are arranged by the families of 
the bride and groom. A schachen arranges for people 
mutually suited, to see each other. They may not like 
the proposed partner, but the parents continue to 
manage. If they are satisfied, they send clothes, 
money, sea-weed or something equally sentimental. 
Then the bride dresses in mourning (which is white in 
Japan) symbolizing her death to her family, and 
goes with the marriage broker to her new home. In 
the old days a bon-fire signalized her leaving. The 
wedding occurs at the house of her "in-laws" and both 
drink three times three out of three different sized 
wine-cups. The bride also changes into a new dress, 
the gift of her husband. Before the festivities are 
over, she again changes into a colored costume she 
has brought with her. The bride-groom also changes 
his costume. The go-between then leads them into 
the bridal chamber, where they drink nine more cups 
of wine, the husband taking the first sip. The third 
day the happy couple visits her parents. In the mean 
time her official registration has been changed to that 
of her new husband. After marriage all the bride has 
to do is literally to obey both husband and mother- 
in-law and live happy ever after. Before 1901 there 
was one divorce to every three marriages, since and 
up to 1905 it was about one to five. Marrying blood 
relatives is unknown in Japan. 

97 



Ever since 1500 the Japs have enjoyed incense snif- 
fing, or rather incense guessing, because the prize at 
these parties is given to the sniffer who can tell which 
of five or six kinds is offered for his smelling. 

Fans used to be prohibited, but now they are a 
requisite feature of court and formal dress. Even 
today one of the inferior class will hide his mouth 
behind a fan in the presence of his superior. 

In 1905 there were six orders of knighthood, the 
Chrysanthemum, the Golden Kite, the Rising Sun, 
the Sacred Treasure, and the order of the Crown. The 
last is for women only. The most exalted honor con- 
ferred by the Japanese Court is the Grand Cordon of 
the Chrysanthemum, which is enjoyed only by royalty. 

I was told that cremation is much more "popular" 
in Japan than in the United States, as poor candidates 
are given cut rates, running sometimes as low as 
seventy-five cents for grown people and fifty cents 
for children. It takes about three hours after which 
the ashes are urned and buried in the ground. 

It used to be a regular thing for the rulers of Japan 
to give way to their sons. Sometimes there would 
be three Mikados, the youngest reigning, with a 
father alive, and a grand-father also alive, who had 
abdicated. 

One of the queerest treatments in Japan used to be 
the perforation of the skin a half to three-quarters of 
an inch with gold, steel, or silver needles a fiftieth of 
an inch in diameter with spiral grooves in them. The 
epidermis is punctured by a blow upon the needle, 
which is then twisted like a gimlet as far down as 
desired, then withdrawn. This is done one to twenty 

98 



times generally in the abdomen. I think the theory 
is that it is so painful that the patient concludes before 
the twentieth punch that he is quite well and needs no 
further treatment. It is Christian Science with a 
reverse English, and is called "acapuncture". Pro- 
fessor Chamberlain is authority for the statement that 
hand-shaking, unknown years ago and practiced little 
now, is a proof of Japanese good sense; and "as for 
kissing, that is tabooed as utterly immodest and re- 
volting". The professor does not add that that is 
another proof of Japanese good sense. 

I have already told you the manifold uses of bam- 
boo — One kind is used for pipe stems, others for doors, 
staves, window blinds, pen staffs, brooms, umbrellas, 
canes, hats, baskets, torches, bird cages, nails, sieves, 
fans, vases, shoes, cables, trays, and a great many 
other articles of daily use. 

Until she learns for herself Japan has no hesitancy 
in employing French, German, American or English 
experts to run her mint, build her navy or organize 
and drill her army. 

The women in the cities here no longer blacken their 
teeth with a mixture of water, wine, iron and gall- 
nuts. They used to paint this tooth-mixture on with 
a little feather. 

The Japanese play flower cards, and Hundred Poets 
"which is like our authors, but money is not often wagered. 

The "Ainos" now live only in the northern Yezo, where 
they were finally driven by the Japanese. Aside from the 
heritage of place names they left, they have affected 
Japanese civilization but little. They are among the hairi- 
est of men and very strong, but miscegenation between 

99 



them and the Japs is not successful because they die out 
after a few generations. The tattooed moustaches on the 
lips of the women and strange designs on their hands 
distinguish them from any other race. They abhor bathing. 
There are now but about sixteen thousand of them left. 
They worship and propitiate only the gods of cereal and 
appetite. 

I hope the International Sleeping Car Company con- 
tinues to thrive under your American management. 

I am, 

Sincerely yours, 

H. B. 



Inland Sea, 
May 7th. 
My dear Hiram: 

I am writing you some of my impressions of a trip 
through rural Japan. To an American today Japan seems 
as primitive in agriculture as Egypt under the Pharaohs. 
Farmers use wooden spades, three-pronged hoes, and a 
wooden plow with its share made of a heavy piece of 
wood sharpened at the end. While the Japanese plan of 
irrigation is good, the methods employed are Methuselan. 
The only way used which is faster than a well bucket is 
for the almost naked man to step with his bare feet on 
the paddle-wheels of a pump that lifts the water from 
a slightly lower level. 

One of the ancient poetic names of this beautiful land 
was "fertile reed-clad country, rich in grain". Six out 
of every ten Japanese live in the country, although only 
twelve per cent, of the land is arable. Nearly all Japan 

100 



is volcanic, and mountainous, and consequently terracing 
here reaches its perfection. The horse and the ox have 
none of the machinery aid that American farmers employ. 
When the dearly raised crops are gathered the scythe and 
harrow and threshing apparatus employed are the same 
as those used by Japanese ancestors thousands of years 
ago. Threshing is done in Japan through wooden frames 
with teeth of metal. It is probably because the land is 
divided into small holdings whose owners have little cap- 
ital, that modern agricultural machinery is unknown. An- 
other reason for the lack of machinery is that Japan has 
none of the great expanses of prairie or desert lands 
known in the United States. The wood gathered for fuel 
is packed on horses or women or men or children, and 
tea and rice are laboriously picked and carried in baskets. 

The rice is first sown "broadcast", and when it comes 
up in the water each sprout is separately pulled up by 
hand and transplanted. Indeed raising it has become 
so expensive that in China especially the coolie class can 
not afford it, and in China the principal food for the 
lower classes is the soya bean, which is so rich in nutriment 

Before being sown on the 88th day of the spring season 
the rice seeds are soaked seven days in salt water, after 
which it is planted in beds. It is not transplanted into 
these paddy fields until the end of May or early in June, 
frequently to the music of "rice planting songs". The 
greatest danger to the crop comes on the two hundred 
and tenth day when the typhoon may damage or destroy 
the crop. 

There are two festivals connected with the harvesting 
of rice, one in October and one in November. At the 
latter held at Ise Shrine, the Emperor tastes the new 

101 



grown rice. At the time of this latter festival the schools 
frequently give vacations. In the fall there is an annual 
festival of the farmers to Ebisu the god of Hard Work, 
and in some provinces when the procession reaches the 
teniple the man in charge exhorts the celebrants : "Let us 
laugh, according to our yearly usage". 

This country produces over 3900 kinds of rice and 
two thirds of the cultivable land of the country is devoted 
to its culture. The quality is the best produced in the 
world, and it raises the third largest amount. Rents 
are frequently paid in rice. The market price of rice is 
quoted by the bag. 

Japan produces twenty-five millions of dollars worth 
of tea yearly. It is picked from the bushes after they 
reach three years growth. 

All day long and all night too I presume, the natives 
sip a very weak brew of tea from little handleless cups, 
and they invariably take it Without sugar. The tea cere- 
mony which I have described in detail on page 75 is the 
most formal thing in Japanese society, and mixing, blend- 
ing, making, and serving tea is the high polite art in this 
fascinating country. 

According to a strictly reliable fable, tea started thus. 
An Indian saint prayed and watched ceaselessly, finally 
he fell asleep. On awaking he showed such disgust at his 
weary eye-lids for closing that he cut them off. They were 
miraculously changed into tea shrubs, the extract from 
whose leaves frequently keep Americans awake long 
through the night. Tea drinking which at first was a 
ceremonial of the court, became universal near the begin- 
ning of the eighteenth century. The tea plant belongs 
to the camelia family. 

102 



Silk produces a hundred millions a year and the worm 
that produces it is called "The honorable little gentleman". 
He feeds on mulberry leaves. 

A Buddist Saint brought tea from China into Japan 
in the beginning of the 9th Century, but it was not until 
the end of the 12th Century that shrubs were propagated 
from Chinese seeds, after which the tea drinking became 
a national custom among the higher classes. The seeds 
are planted in terraces, and the bushes are only allowed 
to grow three or four feet to make picking easier. This 
starts in April and there is a second and sometimes more 
frequent picking beginning in July. The leaves are put 
in a wooden tray with a wire bottom under which there 
is boiling water. This brings the oil to the surface and 
then the firing is done in a wooden frame, heat being 
supplied by charcoal at 120 degrees. After manipulations 
of the leaf it changes color and becomes separately 
crumbled. Then it is fired twice more at different tem- 
peratures and becomes dry. 

"All genuine Japanese tea is what we should term 
'green/ * * * Other tea-like infusions sometimes to be met 
with are made by pouring hot water on a mixture of 
fragrant substances, such as orange peel, etc. * * * an 
infusion of salted cherry blossoms ; an infusion of parched 
barley; * * * and similar preparation of beans. * * * 
'luck tea* is made of salted plums, seed- weeds and 
xanthoxylon seeds, and is partaken of in every Japanese 
house hold on the last night of the year. "Japanese 
tea must not be made with boiling water, and the 
finer the quality the less hot must be the water en> 
ployed." And he says that "frequently the first brew 
is thrown away as too bitter." 

103 



There are 2782 different trees and plants in Japan. 

The Lewisohn chrysanthemum exhibited in the foyer of 
the Waldorf in New York, a few years ago had eighteen 
hundred blossoms on it, but of course, so many buds could 
not compare with the Japanese "Sleepy Head". "White 
Dragon", "Golden Dew, Fishers Lantern", "White 
Dragon" or the exquisite Starlit Night. The Japs make no 
bouquets in our sense of the word, but flowers are loosely 
and artistically arranged. Conder in his Floral Art 
of Japan says a "floral composition" must be made up 
of three sprays the longest middle one bent, and at 
half its length another branching out, and at half its 
length a third branch a quarter as long. 

From the Island of Formosa comes more camphor 
than anywhere else. Camphor is made by cutting 
down and chipping the trees which are then boiled 
and condensed. The trees are frequently from 30 to 
50 feet around. 

One of the odd sights of Japan is to see women 
old and young carrying great mats of brush or bamboo 
or wood on their heads protected only by a small mat 
to soften the pressure. It is not unusual even in the 
cities to see one man or two men pulling on a two- 
wheeled cart a long and heavy telegraph pole. 

Cattle are very scarce in Japan because there is 
little demand for meat. The butter is imported mostly 
from Denmark, and I have never heard of any cheese 
being made here. 

Bread, milk, butter or coffee is seldom seen in use 
by the natives. The fruit in Japan is very inferior. 

They say the best season in the country is autumn, 
when it is clear and the maples fling out their flags 

104 



of gold upon the background of some clashing color 
that shows the wonderful contrasts here. The children 
fly kites of inflated paper representing animals or 
fish, and spin tops, but most of the time seem to be 
acting as little fathers and mothers to the younger members 
of the family. 

The lotus is used as an "emblem", because of the 
wheel like form, the spoke-like petals symbolizing 
perpetual cycles of existence. 

Buddhist representations show Buddha standing on 
lotus flowers and the flower is universally associated 
with death. 

The Jap says, "As the warrior is first among men, 
so is the cherry the first among flowers". Tea is 
made from the blossoms, which has a delicious aroma. 
The blossoms are also preserved in salt. 

I am with cordial good wishes, 

Faithfully 

H. B. 



Beyond Shimonoseki, going to Tsing-Tau, 

May 8. 
Dear Walton: 

When you make purchases in Japan the shop-keeper 
will very probaby use the abacus, a small wooden 
frame about two-thirds of the way up which there is 
a horizontal line of division. Above and below this 
are rods or wires. On the part of each of the rods 
above the division line there are two buttons or count- 

105 



ers like those we use for keeping the score in billiards. 
Below, on each of the seven rods, there are five of 
these buttoms. Your purchases are figured on this 
cryptic device, which has been explained to me over 
and over again, but which I don't get the hang of yet. 
It is some kind of a half decimal system, and when 
you buy it costs you more and when you sell it pays 
you less. It is about as nearly "esoteric" as is any- 
thing else in the East, and won't hurt you if you don't 
try to use it on an Oriental. I prefer a National Cash 
Register. For further details see the Encyclopaedia 
Brittanica, which is clear only in the picture of it 
and not in the description. 

In line with the calculations on the abacus is the 
method of reckoning ages. "A child is born in Decem- 
ber, 1901. By January, 1902 the child is said to be 
two years old, because it has lived through a part of 
two separate years". Even the old maids if there are 
any such things in Japan, use this system. 

There are almost as many feast days in Japan as in 
Italy, ranging from feasts for the birthday of the 
Emperor to the feast of the first of the dog days. 

Massage is done in Japan by the blind, who before 
1870 constituted themselves into "one big union" 
divided into grades, to join the highest of which cost 
a thousand dollars. 

Geishas, who are paid conversationalists, dancers, 
and singing girls, sometimes begin their training at 
seven years of age. The licensed courtesans of Japan 
complain bitterly of the lure of some of the geishas. 

Everybody in Japan is privileged to use any crest 
he may suggest. Hence the first thing that strikes the 

106 



stranger in Japan is to see heraldic or at least descrip- 
tive signs on the back of the shirts of the most humble 
rickshawman or coolie. These had their origin among 
the soldiers of this military nation. The Imperial 
crests are two in number, the sixteen petalled chrysan- 
themum, and the paulownia flower. 

The Japanese character is so imitative that it readily 
takes on almost any fad for a season. Once it was 
cock-fighing, again it was rabbits, at another time 
dancing the European dances, at another time wrestling, 
another speculating, and so on. Even suicide had its vogue. 

Japanese boys have their annual holiday in March 
and the girls in May. At the latter time, the doll shops 
are filled with small people and animals. For the boys 
there are cloth and paper fish, flat or inflated. 

Today I heard the secret of the old fire-walkers 
and their ordeal, which consisted in walking over 
burning embers. It was done by fanatics like the 
whirling dervishes at Constantinople, and was accom- 
plished by the supposed victim stepping in wet salt 
before going across the coals. 

H. B. 



On the Yellow Sea, 

May 9. 
My dear Fred B. : 

I am on my way to China (Shanghai) and this is 
the first time I have had leisure to try to analyze my 
impressions of the Japs. The books you read don't 
settle any of their strange contradictions. If they 

107 



were all women I could decide the question by giving 
it up. As a race they are so full of anomalies that a 
solution of their character is impossible. It seems 
hard to believe that people so different from all the 
other peoples of the earth and so set in their ways of 
differentness, could be so wonderfully adaptive. They 
have the same bodies and the same brains their an- 
cestors had for two thousand years at least. And I can 
not conceive a progressive nation such as we call our- 
selves ever adopting or adapting any of the Oriental 
notions; and yet they, who until lately have never called 
themselves progressive, have assimilated and are still 
rapidly assimilating all the good things of all the civiliza- 
tions. And, furthermore, they do it without in the least 
changing their religion, their morals, their ideals or their 
customs of living, except, of course, in so far as these 
customs must necessarily change to meet the innovations 
they adopt and adapt. I saw a curious illustration of their 
adopting things. You have seen, of course, at home the 
postal czrds with the bathing pictures on them. The Japs 
have taken these bodily, all except the faces, and are selling 
them by the hundreds all over Japan. 

I don't believe our missionaries do much to change their 
religious ideas, because they are an aesthetic people who 
love form and color too much to be moved by a religion 
whose churches are so cold and formal to them. Their 
temples are a delight to the eye, and their religion, the 
ancient Shinto, is like what the Irishman said the Epis- 
copal Church was, you did not want to quit it because 
"you could do what you liked inside and they never put 
anybody out". In A. D. 636 when Buddhism came over 
at the instance of the clever priests from China, the Japs 

108 



at once adopted it and today there are Shinto temples 
and Buddhist temples side by side. All the Jap's training 
is to be considerate, and I think that much of their attitude 
towards our and other beliefs is pure courtesy and nothing 
else. 

In America we are all taught that the introduction of 
labor-saving machinery and of our great enterprises both 
tend to dwarf the individual and make him a simple cog 
in the big machines. Our orators constantly refer to the 
good old days when every shoemaker made a whole shoe, 
etc. But this trip has exploded that theory, because here 
where everything is done with the greatest care by hand- 
power alone, I find no more individuality, indeed not as 
much, as at home. While here every man is a factory in 
himself and the smoke is seldom seen to rise from factory 
chimneys, they are all alike in dress, in manners, their 
mode of transportation and everything else. 

It is remarkable to how many uses bamboo is put in 
Japan. The shoots and roots are eaten, usually boiled 
in cream, and are almost as succulent as celery, with a 
slight turnipy taste. There are two kinds of the reed, one 
with light feathery leaves that are as graceful as ostrich 
feathers, the other as high as thirty feet, often more, with 
a dark green stalk and very dark green leaves. They seem 
to be harder than reeds, and when I tried to cut a small 
one it made three big dents in my knife blade. Every 
form of ornament and utensil is made of it, from toast- 
racks to water pipes for the hot springs. In the beds of 
the rivers the Japs make great baskets of it and put rocks 
in them to deflect the course of their streams. In the 
cities and towns a great many of the houses are built of 
them, even the joints and beams being made of bamboo. 

109 



The houses, by the way, are of a very flimsy character, 
and every guest in a Japanese hotel hears everything that 
every other one does. The walls are lathed with about 
as much bamboo lathing as a cane-seated chair, and over 
this a soft mud plaster with more hair in it than we use 
is daubed, then a cheap wall paper. Of course, most of 
the house is "Shojis" or sash, sliding on shutters and 
filled with paper. 

All through their architecture runs this idea of imper- 
mianency, due, to some extent, to fear of earthquakes which 
shake down a more substantial structure. But the whole 
Japanese theory is one of impermanency. They have 
some great temples that are deliberately destroyed every 
twenty years and rebuilt, the debris of the destroyed 
building being sold as souvenirs to the faithful Shinto 
religionists. Going back once more to their contradictory 
characteristics, the most striking thing is the adaptation 
of Buddhism, the religion of peace and tranquility, to 
Shintoism, the religion of war and fighters. I think all the 
jingo talk in Japan is caused by the jingoes of this country 
who are trying to 'stir up race hatred for their selfish 
purposes only. They are like the little men who know the 
big fellows will not fight them, and who bluff accordingly. 

I haven't heard one word from home, and I only hope 
you are all well and happy. I will take the Trans- Siberia 
at Harbin on 29th. 

The pretty girl, who is just your style, sits by while I 
am writing, and says, from what I have told her, she 
would like to meet you. Best regards to everybody in 
the office. 

Yours truly, 

H. B. 

110 



AFTER-WORD. 

I hope I have given you some idea of this enchanting 
land of Japan, where filial reverence and patriotism and 
gentle courtesy go hand in hand. It is a wonder-land of 
pink cherry blossoms, and lacquered houses, and quaint 
grave interesting men and women. Nature here is at her 
best, and art is at its height. Every place is redolent of 
that old Japan that was as impenetrable as Silence and as 
mysterious as Time. Here the flowers are more exquisite, 
the setting more artistic and the scenery more picturesque 
than in any part of the world that I have seen. 

Upon this background of the past there is being painted 
to-day a picture of modernity. With telephones, and 
telegraphs, and radio, and electricity, and aeroplanes, and 
battle-ships, and victorious armies, and European clothes, 
education and customs, this nation of sturdy men and 
obedient women is the ally of the four leaders of civiliza- 
tion. To-day they exhibit an enterprise as amazing as 
their land is beautiful, and a patriotism as refreshing as 
their courage is exalting. If we must have allies, let us 
congratulate ourselves that we are allied with the descend- 
ants of those same brave Japs who threw wide their gates 
to Western civilization when they welcomed our own 
American, Admiral Perry. 

H. B. 



Ill 



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